"The Power of the Powerless" (October 1978)
was originally written ("quickly," Havel said later) as a discussion
piece for a projected joint Polish Czechoslovak volume of essays on the subject
of freedom and power. All the participants were to receive Havel's essay, and
then respond to it in writing. Twenty participants were chosen on both sides,
but only the Czechoslovak side was completed. Meanwhile, in May 1979, some of
the Czechoslovak contributors who were also members of VONS (the Committee to
Defend the Unjustly Prosecuted), including Havel, were arrested, and it was
decided to go ahead and "publish" the Czechoslovak contributions
separately.

Havel's essay has had a profound impact on Eastern Europe.
Here is what Zbygniew Bujak, a Solidarity activist, told me: "This essay
reached us in the Ursus factory in 1979 at a point when we felt we were at the
end of the road. Inspired by KOR [the Polish Workers' Defense Committee], we
had been speaking on the shop floor, talking to people, participating in public
meetings, trying to speak the truth about the factory, the country, and
politics. There came a moment when people thought we were crazy. Why were we
doing this? Why were we taking such risks? Not seeing any immediate and
tangible results, we began to doubt the purposefulness of what we were doing.
Shouldn’t we be coming up with other methods, other ways?

"Then came the essay by Havel. Reading it gave us
the theoretical underpinnings for our activity. It maintained our spirits; we
did not give up, and a year later—in August 1980—it became clear that the party
apparatus and the factory management were afraid of us. We mattered. And the
rank and file saw us as leaders of the movement. When I look at the victories
of Solidarity, and of Charter 77, I see in them an astonishing fulfillment of
the prophecies and knowledge contained in Havel's essay."

Translated by Paul Wilson, "The Power of the
Powerless" has appeared several times in English, foremost in The Power of
the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central-Eastern Europe, edited by
John Keane, with an Introduction by Steven Lukes (London: Hutchinson, 1985).
That volume includes a selection of nine other essays from the original Czech
and Slovak collection.

I

A SPECTER is
haunting Eastern Europe: the specter of what in the West is called
"dissent." This specter has not appeared out of thin air. It is a
natural and inevitable consequence of the present historical phase of the
system it is haunting. It was born at a time when this system, for a thousand
reasons, can no longer base itself on the unadulterated, brutal, and arbitrary
application of power, eliminating all expressions of nonconformity. What is
more, the system has become so ossified politically that there is practically
no way for such nonconformity to be implemented within its official structures.

Who are these so-called dissidents? Where does their point of view come
from, and what importance does it have? What is the significance of the
"independent initiatives" in which "dissidents"
collaborate, and what real chances do such initiatives have of success? Is it
appropriate to refer to "dissidents" as an opposition? If so, what
exactly is such an opposition within the framework of this system? What does it
do? What role does it play in society? What are its hopes and on what are they
based? Is it within the power of the "dissidents"—as a category of
subcitizen outside the power establishment—to have any influence at all on
society and the social system? Can they actually change anything?

I think that an examination of these questions—an examination of the
potential of the "powerless"—can only begin with an examination of
the nature of power in the circumstances in which these powerless people
operate.

II

OUR SYSTEM is most
frequently characterized as a dictatorship or, more precisely, as the
dictatorship of a political bureaucracy over a society which has undergone
economic and social leveling. I am afraid that the term
"dictatorship," regardless of how intelligible it may otherwise be,
tends to obscure rather than clarify the real nature of power in this system.
We usually associate the term with the notion of a small group of people who
take over the government of a given country by force; their power is wielded
openly, using the direct instruments of power at their disposal, and they are
easily distinguished socially from the majority over whom they rule. One of the
essential aspects of this traditional or classical notion of dictatorship is
the assumption that it is temporary, ephemeral, lacking historical roots. Its
existence seems to be bound up with the lives of those who established it. It
is usually local in extent and significance, and regardless of the ideology it
utilizes to grant itself legitimacy, its power derives ultimately from the
numbers and the armed might of its soldiers and police. The principal threat to
its existence is felt to be the possibility that someone better equipped in
this sense might appear and overthrow it.

Even this very superficial overview should make it clear that the system in
which we live has very little in common with a classical dictatorship. In the
first place, our system is not limited in a local, geographical sense; rather,
it holds sway over a huge power bloc controlled by one of the two superpowers.
And although it quite naturally exhibits a number of local and historical
variations, the range of these variations is fundamentally circumscribed by a
single, unifying framework throughout the power bloc. Not only is the
dictatorship everywhere based on the same principles and structured in the same
way (that is, in the way evolved by the ruling super power), but each country
has been completely penetrated by a network of manipulatory instruments controlled
by the superpower center and totally subordinated to its interests. In the
stalemated world of nuclear parity, of course, that circumstance endows the
system with an unprecedented degree of external stability compared with
classical dictatorships. Many local crises which, in an isolated state, would
lead to a change in the system, can be resolved through direct intervention by
the armed forces of the rest of the bloc.

In the second place, if a feature of classical dictatorships is their lack
of historical roots (frequently they appear to be no more than historical
freaks, the fortuitous consequence of fortuitous social processes or of human
and mob tendencies), the same cannot be said so facilely about our system. For
even though our dictatorship has long since alienated itself completely from
the social movements that give birth to it, the authenticity of these movements
(and I am thinking of the proletarian and socialist movements of the nineteenth
century) gives it undeniable historicity. These origins provided a solid
foundation of sorts on which it could build until it became the utterly new
social and political reality it is today, which has become so inextricably a
part of the structure of the modern world. A feature of those historical origins
was the "correct" understanding of social conflicts in the period
from which those original movements emerged. The fact that at the very core of
this "correct" understanding there was a genetic disposition toward
the monstrous alienation characteristic of its subsequence development is not
essential here. And in any case, this element also grew organically from the
climate of that time and therefore can be said to have its origin there as
well.

One legacy of that original "correct" understanding is a third
peculiarity that makes our systems different from other modern dictatorships:
it commands an incomparably more precise, logically structured, generally
comprehensible and, in essence, extremely flexible ideology that, in its
elaborateness and completeness, is almost a secularized religion. It of fears a
ready answer to any question whatsoever; it can scarcely be accepted only in
part, and accepting it has profound implications for human life. In an era when
metaphysical and existential certainties are in a state of crisis, when people
are being uprooted and alienated and are losing their sense of what this world
means, this ideology inevitably has a certain hypnotic charm. To wandering
humankind it offers an immediately available home: all one has to do is accept
it, and suddenly everything becomes clear once more, life takes on new meaning,
and all mysteries, unanswered questions, anxiety, and loneliness vanish. Of
course, one pays dearly for this low-rent home: the price is abdication of one’s
own reason, conscience, and responsibility, for an essential aspect of this
ideology is the consignment of reason and conscience to a higher authority. The
principle involved here is that the center of power is identical with the
center of truth. (In our case, the connection with Byzantine theocracy is
direct: the highest secular authority is identical with the highest spiritual
authority.) It is true of course that, all this aside, ideology no longer has
any great influence on people, at least within our bloc (with the possible
exception of Russia, where the serf mentality, with its blind, fatalistic
respect for rulers and its automatic acceptance of all their claims, is still
dominant and combined with a superpower patriotism which traditionally places
the interests of empire higher than the interests of humanity). But this is not
important, because ideology plays its role in our system very well (an issue to
which I will return) precisely because it is what it is.

Fourth, the technique of exercising power in traditional dictatorships
contains a necessary element of improvisation. The mechanisms for wielding
power are for the most part not established firmly, and there is considerable
room for accident and for the arbitrary and unregulated application of power.
Socially, psychologically, and physically, conditions still exist for the
expression of some form of opposition. In short, there are many seams on the
surface which can split apart before the entire power structure has managed to
stabilize. Our system, on the other hand, has been developing in the Soviet
Union for over sixty years, and for approximately thirty years in Eastern
Europe; moreover, several of its long-established structural features are
derived from Czarist absolutism. In terms of the physical aspects of power,
this has led to the creation of such intricate and well-developed mechanisms
for the direct and indirect manipulation of the entire population that, as a
physical power base, it represents something radically new. At the same time,
let us not forget that the system is made significantly more effective by state
ownership and central direction of all the means of production. This gives the
power structure an unprecedented and uncontrollable capacity to invest in
itself (in the areas of the bureaucracy and the police, for example) and makes
it easier for that structure, as the sole employer, to manipulate the
day-to-day existence of all citizens.

Finally, if an atmosphere of revolutionary excitement, heroism, dedication,
and boisterous violence on all sides characterizes classical dictatorships,
then the last traces of such an atmosphere have vanished from the Soviet bloc.
For some time now this bloc has ceased to be a kind of enclave, isolated from
the rest of the developed world and immune to processes occurring in it. To the
contrary, the Soviet bloc is an integral part of that larger world, and it
shares and shapes the world's destiny. This means in concrete terms that the
hierarchy of values existing in the developed countries of the West has, in essence,
appeared in our society (the long period of co-existence with the West has only
hastened this process). In other words, what we have here is simply another
form of the consumer and industrial society, with all its concomitant social,
intellectual, and psychological consequences. It is impossible to understand
the nature of power in our system properly without taking this into account.

The profound difference between our system—in terms of the nature of power—and
what we traditionally understand by dictatorship, a difference I hope is clear
even from this quite superficial comparison, has caused me to search for some
term appropriate for our system, purely for the purposes of this essay. If I
refer to it henceforth as a "post-totalitarian" system, I am fully
aware that this is perhaps not the most precise term, but I am unable to think
of a better one. I do not wish to imply by the prefix "post" that the
system is no longer totalitarian; on the contrary, I mean that it is
totalitarian in a way fundamentally different from classical dictatorships,
different from totalitarianism as we usually understand it.

The circumstances I have mentioned, however, form only a circle of
conditional factors and a kind of phenomenal framework for the actual
composition of power in the post-totalitarian system, several aspects of which
I shall now attempt to identify.

III

THE MANAGER of a
fruit-and-vegetable shop places in his window, among the onions and carrots,
the slogan: "Workers of the world, unite!" Why does he do it? What is
he trying to communicate to the world? Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the
idea of unity among the workers of the world? Is his enthusiasm so great that
he feels an irrepressible impulse to acquaint the public with his ideals? Has
he really given more than a moment's thought to how such a unification might
occur and what it would mean?

I think it can safely be assumed that the overwhelming majority of
shopkeepers never think about the slogans they put in their windows, nor do
they use them to express their real opinions. That poster was delivered to our
greengrocer from the enterprise headquarters along with the onions and carrots.
He put them all into the window simply because it has been done that way for
years, because everyone does it, and because that is the way it has to be. If
he were to refuse, there could be trouble. He could be reproached for not
having the proper decoration in his window; someone might even accuse him of
disloyalty. He does it because these things must be done if one is to get along
in life. It is one of the thousands of details that guarantee him a relatively
tranquil life "in harmony with society," as they say.

Obviously the greengrocer is indifferent to the semantic content of the
slogan on exhibit; he does not put the slogan in his window from any personal
desire to acquaint the public with the ideal it expresses. This, of course,
does not mean that his action has no motive or significance at all, or that the
slogan communicates nothing to anyone. The slogan is really a sign, and as such
it contains a subliminal but very definite message. Verbally, it might be
expressed this way: "I, the greengrocer XY, live here and I know what I
must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am
beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in
peace." This message, of course, has an addressee: it is directed above,
to the greengrocer's superior, and at the same time it is a shield that
protects the greengrocer from potential informers. The slogan's real meaning,
therefore, is rooted firmly in the greengrocer's existence. It reflects his
vital interests. But what are those vital interests?

Let us take note: if the greengrocer had been instructed to display the
slogan "I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient,” he would not
be nearly as indifferent to its semantics, even though the statement would
reflect the truth. The greengrocer would be embarrassed and ashamed to put such
an unequivocal statement of his own degradation in the shop window, and quite
naturally so, for he is a human being and thus has a sense of his own dignity.
To overcome this complication, his expression of loyalty must take the form of
a sign which, at least on its textual surface, indicates a level of
disinterested conviction. It must allow the greengrocer to say, "What's
wrong with the workers of the world uniting?" Thus the sign helps the
greengrocer to conceal from himself the low foundations of his obedience, at
the same time concealing the low foundations of power. It hides them behind the
facade of something high. And that something is ideology.

Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings
the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier
for them to part with them. As the repository of something suprapersonal and
objective, it enables people to deceive their conscience and conceal their true
position and their inglorious modus
vivendi, both from the world and from themselves. It is a very pragmatic
but, at the same time, an apparently dignified way of legitimizing what is
above, below, and on either side. It is directed toward people and toward God.
It is a veil behind which human beings can hide their own fallen existence,
their trivialization, and their adaptation to the status quo. It is an excuse
that everyone can use, from the greengrocer, who conceals his fear of losing
his job behind an alleged interest in the unification of the workers of the
world, to the highest functionary, whose interest in staying in power can be
cloaked in phrases about service to the working class. The primary excusatory
function of ideology, therefore, is to provide people, both as victims and
pillars of the post-totalitarian system, with the illusion that the system is
in harmony with the human order and the order of the universe.

The smaller a dictatorship and the less stratified by modernization the
society under it, the more directly the will of the dictator can be exercised.
In other words, the dictator can employ more or less naked discipline, avoiding
the complex processes of relating to the world and of self-justification which
ideology involves. But the more complex the mechanisms of power become, the
larger and more stratified the society they embrace, and the longer they have
operated historically, the more individuals must be connected to them from
outside, and the greater the importance attached to the ideological excuse. It
acts as a kind of bridge between the regime and the people, across which the
regime approaches the people and the people approach the regime. This explains
why ideology plays such an important role in the post-totalitarian system: that
complex machinery of units, hierarchies, transmission belts, and indirect
instruments of manipulation which ensure in countless ways the integrity of the
regime, leaving nothing to chance, would be quite simply unthinkable without
ideology acting as its all-embracing excuse and as the excuse for each of its
parts.

IV

BETWEEN the aims
of the post-totalitarian system and the aims of life there is a yawning abyss:
while life, in its essence, moves toward plurality, diversity, independent
self-constitution, and self organization, in short, toward the fulfillment of
its own freedom, the post-totalitarian system demands conformity, uniformity,
and discipline. While life ever strives to create new and improbable
structures, the post-totalitarian system contrives to force life into its most
probable states. The aims of the system reveal its most essential
characteristic to be introversion, a movement toward being ever more completely
and unreservedly itself, which means that the radius of its influence is
continually widening as well. This system serves people only to the extent
necessary to ensure that people will serve it. Anything beyond this, that is to
say, anything which leads people to overstep their predetermined roles is
regarded by the system as an attack upon itself. And in this respect it is
correct: every instance of such transgression is a genuine denial of the
system. It can be said, therefore, that the inner aim of the post-totalitarian
system is not mere preservation of power in the hands of a ruling clique, as
appears to be the case at first sight. Rather, the social phenomenon of self-preservation
is subordinated to something higher, to a kind of blind automatism which drives
the system. No matter what position individuals hold in the hierarchy of power,
they are not considered by the system to be worth anything in themselves, but
only as things intended to fuel and serve this automatism. For this reason, an
individual's desire for power is admissible only in so far as its direction
coincides with the direction of the automatism of the system.

Ideology, in creating a bridge of excuses between the system and the
individual, spans the abyss between the aims of the system and the aims of
life. It pretends that the requirements of the system derive from the
requirements of life. It is a world of appearances trying to pass for reality.

The post-totalitarian system touches people at every step, but it does so
with its ideological gloves on. This is why life in the system is so thoroughly
permeated with hypocrisy and lies: government by bureaucracy is called popular
government; the working class is enslaved in the name of the working class; the
complete degradation of the individual is presented as his ultimate liberation;
depriving people of information is called making it available; the use of power
to manipulate is called the public control of power, and the arbitrary abuse of
power is called observing the legal code; the repression of culture is called
its development; the expansion of imperial influence is presented as support
for the oppressed; the lack of free expression becomes the highest form of
freedom; farcical elections become the highest form of democracy; banning
independent thought becomes the most scientific of world views; military
occupation becomes fraternal assistance. Because the regime is captive to its
own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the
present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not
to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to
respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no one. It pretends to fear
nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.

Individuals need not believe all these mystifications, but they must behave
as though they did, or they must at least tolerate them in silence, or get
along well with those who work with them. For this reason, however, they must
live within a lie. They need not accept the lie. It is enough for them to have
accepted their life with it and in it. For by this very fact, individuals
confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system.

V

WE HAVE seen that
the real meaning of the greengrocer's slogan has nothing to do with what the
text of the slogan actually says. Even so, this real meaning is quite clear and
generally comprehensible because the code is so familiar: the greengrocer
declares his loyalty (and he can do no other if his declaration is to be
accepted) in the only way the regime is capable of hearing; that is, by
accepting the prescribed ritual, by accepting appearances as reality, by
accepting the given rules of the game. In doing so, however, he has himself
become a player in the game, thus making it possible for the game to go on, for
it to exist in the first place.

If ideology was originally a bridge between the system and the individual
as an individual, then the moment he steps on to this bridge it becomes at the
same time a bridge between the system and the individual as a component of the
system. That is, if ideology originally facilitated (by acting outwardly) the
constitution of power by serving as a psychological excuse, then from the
moment that excuse is accepted, it constitutes power inwardly, becoming an
active component of that power. It begins to function as the principal
instrument of ritual communication within the system of power.

The whole power structure (and we have already discussed its physical
articulation) could not exist at all if there were not a certain metaphysical
order binding all its components together, interconnecting them and
subordinating them to a uniform method of accountability, supplying the
combined operation of all these components with rules of the game, that is,
with certain regulations, limitations, and legalities. This metaphysical order
is fundamental to, and standard throughout, the entire power structure; it
integrates its communication system and makes possible the internal exchange
and transfer of information and instructions. It is rather like a collection of
traffic signals and directional signs, giving the process shape and structure.
This metaphysical order guarantees the inner coherence of the totalitarian
power structure. It is the glue holding it together, its binding principle, the
instrument of its discipline. Without this glue the structure as a totalitarian
structure would vanish; it would disintegrate into individual atoms chaotically
colliding with one another in their unregulated particular interests and
inclinations. The entire pyramid of totalitarian power, deprived of the element
that binds it together, would collapse in upon itself, as it were, in a kind of
material implosion.

As the interpretation of reality by the power structure, ideology is always
subordinated ultimately to the interests of the structure. Therefore, it has a
natural tendency to disengage itself from reality, to create a world of appearances,
to become ritual. In societies where there is public competition for power and
therefore public control of that power, there also exists quite naturally
public control of the way that power legitimates itself ideologically.
Consequently, in such conditions there are always certain correctives that
effectively prevent ideology from abandoning reality altogether. Under
totalitarianism, however, these correctives disappear, and thus there is
nothing to prevent ideology from becoming more and more removed from reality,
gradually turning into what it has already become in the post-totalitarian
system: a world of appearances, a mere ritual, a formalized language deprived
of semantic contact with reality and transformed into a system of ritual signs
that replace reality with pseudo-reality.

Yet, as we have seen, ideology becomes at the same time an increasingly
important component of power, a pillar providing it with both excusatory
legitimacy and an inner coherence. As this aspect grows in importance, and as it
gradually loses touch with reality, it acquires a peculiar but very real
strength. It becomes reality itself, albeit a reality altogether
self-contained, one that on certain levels (chiefly inside the power structure)
may have even greater weight than reality as such. Increasingly, the virtuosity
of the ritual becomes more important than the reality hidden behind it. The
significance of phenomena no longer derives from the phenomena themselves, but
from their locus as concepts in the ideological context. Reality does not shape
theory, but rather the reverse. Thus power gradually draws closer to ideology
than it does to reality; it draws its strength from theory and becomes entirely
dependent on it. This inevitably leads, of course, to a paradoxical result:
rather than theory, or rather ideology, serving power, power begins to serve
ideology. It is as though ideology had appropriated power from power, as though
it had become dictator itself. It then appears that theory itself, ritual
itself, ideology itself, makes decisions that affect people, and not the other
way around.

If ideology is the principal guarantee of the inner consistency of power,
it becomes at the same time an increasingly important guarantee of its
continuity. Whereas succession to power in classical dictatorship is always a
rather complicated affair (the pretenders having nothing to give their claims
reasonable legitimacy, thereby forcing them always to resort to confrontations
of naked power), in the post-totalitarian system power is passed on from person
to person, from clique to clique, and from generation to generation in an
essentially more regular fashion. In the selection of pretenders, a new
"king-maker" takes part: it is ritual legitimation, the ability to
rely on ritual, to fulfill it and use it, to allow oneself, as it were, to be
borne aloft by it. Naturally, power struggles exist in the post-totalitarian
system as well, and most of them are far more brutal than in an open society,
for the struggle is not open, regulated by democratic rules, and subject to
public control, but hidden behind the scenes. (It is difficult to recall a
single instance in which the First Secretary of a ruling Communist Party has
been replaced without the various military and security forces being placed at
least on alert.) This struggle, however, can never (as it can in classical
dictatorships) threaten the very essence of the system and its continuity. At
most it will shake up the power structure, which will recover quickly precisely
because the binding substance—ideology—remains undisturbed. No matter who is
replaced by whom, succession is only possible against the backdrop and within
the framework of a common ritual. It can never take place by denying that
ritual.

Because of this dictatorship of the ritual, however, power becomes clearly
anonymous. Individuals are almost dissolved in the ritual. They allow
themselves to be swept along by it and frequently it seems as though ritual
alone carries people from obscurity into the light of power. Is it not characteristic
of the post-totalitarian system that, on all levels of the power hierarchy,
individuals are increasingly being pushed aside by faceless people, puppets,
those uniformed flunkeys of the rituals and routines of power?

The automatic operation of a power structure thus dehumanized and made
anonymous is a feature of the fundamental automatism of this system. It would
seem that it is precisely the diktats
of this automatism which select people lacking individual will for the power
structure, that it is precisely the diktat
of the empty phrase which summons to power people who use empty phrases as the
best guarantee that the automatism of the post-totalitarian system will
continue.

Western Sovietologists often exaggerate the role of individuals in the post-totalitarian
system and overlook the fact that the ruling figures, despite the immense power
they possess through the centralized structure of power, are often no more than
blind executors of the system's own internal laws-laws they themselves never can,
and never do, reflect upon. In any case, experience has taught us again and
again that this automatism is far more powerful than the will of any
individual; and should someone possess a more independent will, he must conceal
it behind a ritually anonymous mask in order to have an opportunity to enter
the power hierarchy at all. And when the individual finally gains a place there
and tries to make his will felt within it, that automatism, with its enormous
inertia, will triumph sooner or later, and either the individual will be
ejected by the power structure like a foreign organism, or he will be compelled
to resign his individuality gradually, once again blending with the automatism
and becoming its servant, almost indistinguishable from those who preceded him
and those who will follow. (Let us recall, for instance, the development of
Husák or Gomukka.) The necessity of continually hiding behind and relating to
ritual means that even the more enlightened members of the power structure are
often obsessed with ideology. They are never able to plunge straight to the
bottom of naked reality, and they always confuse it, in the final analysis,
with ideological pseudo-reality. (In my opinion, one of the reasons the Dubček
leadership lost control of the situation in 1968 was precisely because, in
extreme situations and in final questions, its members were never capable of
extricating themselves completely from the world of appearances.)

It can be said, therefore, that ideology, as that instrument of internal
communication which assures the power structure of inner cohesion is, in the
post-totalitarian system, some thing that transcends the physical aspects of
power, something that dominates it to a considerable degree and, therefore,
tends to assure its continuity as well. It is one of the pillars of the
system's external stability. This pillar, however, is built on a very unstable
foundation. It is built on lies. It works only as long as people are willing to
live within the lie.

VI

WHY IN FACT did
our greengrocer have to put his loyalty on display in the shop window? Had he
not already displayed it sufficiently in various internal or semipublic ways?
At trade union meetings, after all, he had always voted as he should. He had
always taken part in various competitions. He voted in elections like a good
citizen. He had even signed the "anti-Charter." Why, on top of all
that, should he have to declare his loyalty publicly? After all, the people who
walk past his window will certainly not stop to read that, in the greengrocer's
opinion, the workers of the world ought to unite. The fact of the matter is,
they don't read the slogan at all, and it can be fairly assumed they don't even
see it. If you were to ask a woman who had stopped in front of his shop what
she saw in the window, she could certainly tell whether or not they had
tomatoes today, but it is highly unlikely that she noticed the slogan at all,
let alone what it said.

It seems senseless to require the greengrocer to declare his loyalty
publicly. But it makes sense nevertheless. People ignore his slogan, but they
do so because such slogans are also found in other shop windows, on lampposts,
bulletin boards, in apartment windows, and on buildings; they are everywhere,
in fact. They form part of the panorama of everyday life. Of course, while they
ignore the details, people are very aware of that panorama as a whole. And what
else is the greengrocer's slogan but a small component in that huge backdrop to
daily life?

The greengrocer had to put the slogan in his window, therefore, not in the
hope that someone might read it or be persuaded by it, but to contribute, along
with thousands of other slogans, to the panorama that everyone is very much
aware of. This panorama, of course, has a subliminal meaning as well: it reminds
people where they are living and what is expected of them. It tells them what
everyone else is doing, and indicates to them what they must do as well, if
they don't want to be excluded, to fall into isolation, alienate themselves
from society, break the rules of the game, and risk the loss of their peace and
tranquility and security.

The woman who ignored the greengrocer's slogan may well have hung a similar
slogan just an hour before in the corridor of the office where she works. She
did it more or less without thinking, just as our greengrocer did, and she
could do so precisely because she was doing it against the background of the
general panorama and with some awareness of it, that is, against the background
of the panorama of which the greengrocer's shop window forms a part. When the
greengrocer visits her office, he will not notice her slogan either, just as
she failed to notice his. Nevertheless, their slogans are mutually dependent:
both were displayed with some awareness of the general panorama and, we might
say, under its diktat. Both, however,
assist in the creation of that panorama, and therefore they assist in the
creation of that diktat as well. The
greengrocer and the office worker have both adapted to the conditions in which
they live, but in doing so, they help to create those conditions. They do what
is done, what is to be done, what must be done, but at the same time—by that
very token—they confirm that it must be done in fact. They conform to a
particular requirement and in so doing they themselves perpetuate that
requirement. Metaphysically speaking, without the greengrocer's slogan the
office worker's slogan could not exist, and vice versa. Each proposes to the
other that something be repeated and each accepts the other's proposal. Their
mutual indifference to each other's slogans is only an illusion: in reality, by
exhibiting their slogans, each compels the other to accept the rules of the
game and to confirm thereby the power that requires the slogans in the first
place. Quite simply, each helps the other to be obedient. Both are objects in a
system of control, but at the same time they are its subjects as well. They are
both victims of the system and its instruments.

If an entire district town is plastered with slogans that no one reads, it
is on the one hand a message from the district secretary to the regional
secretary, but it is also something more: a small example of the principle of
social auto-totality at work. Part of the essence of the post-totalitarian
system is that it draws everyone into its sphere of power, not so they may
realize themselves as human beings, but so they may surrender their human
identity in favor of the identity of the system, that is, so they may become
agents of the system's general automatism and servants of its self-determined
goals, so they may participate in the common responsibility for it, so they may
be pulled into and ensnared by it, like Faust by Mephistopheles. More than
this: so they may create through their involvement a general norm and, thus, bring
pressure to bear on their fellow citizens. And further: so they may learn to be
comfortable with their involvement, to identify with it as though it were
something natural and inevitable and, ultimately, so they may—with no external
urging—come to treat any non-involvement as an abnormality, as arrogance, as an
attack on themselves, as a form of dropping out of society. By pulling everyone
into its power structure, the post-totalitarian system makes everyone an
instrument of a mutual totality, the auto-totality of society.

Everyone, however, is in fact involved and enslaved, not only the
greengrocers but also the prime ministers. Differing positions in the hierarchy
merely establish differing degrees of involvement: the greengrocer is involved
only to a minor extent, but he also has very little power. The prime minister,
naturally, has greater power, but in return he is far more deeply involved.
Both, however, are unfree, each merely in a somewhat different way. The real
accomplice in this involvement, therefore, is not another person, but the
system itself.

Position in the
power hierarchy determines the degree of responsibility and guilt, but it gives
no one unlimited responsibility and guilt, nor does it completely absolve
anyone. Thus the conflict between the aims of life and the aims of the system
is not a conflict between two socially defined and separate communities; and
only a very generalized view (and even that only approximative) permits us to
divide society into the rulers and the ruled. Here, by the way, is one of the
most important differences between the post-totalitarian system and classical
dictatorships, in which this line of conflict can still be drawn according to
social class. In the post-totalitarian system, this line runs de facto through
each person, for everyone in his own way is both a victim and a supporter of
the system. What we understand by the system is not, therefore, a social order
imposed by one group upon another, but rather something which permeates the
entire society and is a factor in shaping it, something which may seem
impossible to grasp or define (for it is in the nature of a mere principle),
but which is expressed by the entire society as an important feature of its
life.

The fact that human beings have created, and daily create, this
self-directed system through which they divest themselves of their innermost
identity is not therefore the result of some incomprehensible misunderstanding
of history, nor is it history somehow gone off its rails. Neither is it the
product of some diabolical higher will which has decided, for reasons unknown,
to torment a portion of humanity in this way. It can happen and did happen only
because there is obviously in modern humanity a certain tendency toward the
creation, or at least the toleration, of such a system. There is obviously
something in human beings which responds to this system, something they reflect
and accommodate, something within them which paralyzes every effort of their
better selves to revolt. Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but
they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable of living
in this way. Therefore not only does the system alienate humanity, but at the
same time alienated humanity supports this system as its own involuntary master
plan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration, as a record of people's
own failure as individuals.

The essential aims of life are present naturally in every person. In
everyone there is some longing for humanity's rightful dignity, for moral integrity,
for free expression of being and a sense of transcendence over the world of
existence. Yet, at the same time, each person is capable, to a greater or
lesser degree, of coming to terms with living within the lie. Each person
somehow succumbs to a profane trivialization of his inherent humanity, and to
utilitarianism. In everyone there is some willingness to merge with the
anonymous crowd and to flow comfortably along with it down the river of pseudolife.
This is much more than a simple conflict between two identities. It is
something far worse: it is a challenge to the very notion of identity itself.

In highly simplified terms, it could be said that the post-totalitarian
system has been built on foundations laid by the historical encounter between dictatorship
and the consumer society. Is it not true that the far-reaching adaptability to
living a lie and the effortless spread of social auto-totality have some
connection with the general unwillingness of consumption-oriented people to
sacrifice some material certainties for the sake of their own spiritual and
moral integrity? With their willingness to surrender higher values when faced
with the trivializing temptations of modern civilization? With their
vulnerability to the attractions of mass indifference? And in the end, is not
the grayness and the emptiness of life in the post-totalitarian system only an
inflated caricature of modern life in general? And do we not in fact stand
(although in the external measures of civilization, we are far behind) as a
kind of warning to the West, revealing to its own latent tendencies?

VII

LET US now imagine
that one day something in our greengrocer snaps and he stops putting up the
slogans merely to ingratiate himself. He stops voting in elections he knows are
a farce. He begins to say what he really thinks at political meetings. And he
even finds the strength in himself to express solidarity with those whom his
conscience commands him to support. In this revolt the greengrocer steps out of
living within the lie. He rejects the ritual and breaks the rules of the game.
He discovers once more his suppressed identity and dignity. He gives his
freedom a concrete significance. His revolt is an attempt to live within the
truth.

The bill is not long in coming. He will be relieved of his post as manager
of the shop and transferred to the warehouse. His pay will be reduced. His
hopes for a holiday in Bulgaria will evaporate. His children's access to higher
education will be threatened. His superiors will harass him and his fellow
workers will wonder about him. Most of those who apply these sanctions,
however, will not do so from any authentic inner conviction but simply under
pressure from conditions, the same conditions that once pressured the
greengrocer to display the official slogans. They will persecute the
greengrocer either because it is expected of them, or to demonstrate their
loyalty, or simply as part of the general panorama, to which belongs an
awareness that this is how situations of this sort are dealt with, that this,
in fact, is how things are always done, particularly if one is not to become
suspect oneself. The executors, therefore, behave essentially like everyone
else, to a greater or lesser degree: as components of the post-totalitarian
system, as agents of its automatism, as petty instruments of the social
auto-totality.

Thus the power structure, through the agency of those who carry out the
sanctions, those anonymous components of the system, will spew the greengrocer
from its mouth. The system, through its alienating presence ín people, will
punish him for his rebellion. It must do so because the logic of its automatism
and self-defense dictate it. The greengrocer has not committed a simple,
individual offense, isolated in its own uniqueness, but something incomparably
more serious. By breaking the rules of the game, he has disrupted the game as
such. He has exposed it as a mere game. He has shattered the world of
appearances, the fundamental pillar of the system. He has upset the power
structure by tearing apart what holds it together. He has demonstrated that
living a lie is living a lie. He has broken through the exalted facade of the
system and exposed the real, base foundations of power. He has said that the
emperor is naked. And because the emperor is in fact naked, something extremely
dangerous has happened: by his action, the greengrocer has addressed the world.
He has enabled everyone to peer behind the curtain. He has shown everyone that
it is possible to live within the truth. Living within the lie can constitute
the system only if it is universal. The principle must embrace and permeate
everything. There are no terms whatsoever on which it can co-exist with living
within the truth, and therefore everyone who steps out of line denies it in
principle and threatens it in its entirety.

This is understandable: as long as appearance is not confronted with
reality, it does not seem to be appearance. As long as living a lie is not
confronted with living the truth, the perspective needed to expose its mendacity
is lacking. As soon as the alternative appears, however, it threatens the very
existence of appearance and living a lie in terms of what they are, both their
essence and their all-inclusiveness. And at the same time, it is utterly
unimportant how large a space this alternative occupies: its power does not
consist in its physical attributes but in the light it casts on those pillars
of the system and on its unstable foundations. After all, the greengrocer was a
threat to the system not because of any physical or actual power he had, but
because his action went beyond itself, because it illuminated its surroundings
and, of course, because of the incalculable consequences of that illumination.
In the post-totalitarian system, therefore, living within the truth has more
than a mere existential dimension (returning humanity to its inherent nature),
or a noetic dimension (revealing reality as it is), or a moral dimension
(setting an example for others). It also has an unambiguous political
dimension. If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not
surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living the truth. This is why
it must be suppressed more severely than anything else.

In the post-totalitarian system, truth in the widest sense of the word has
a very special import, one unknown in other contexts. In this system, truth
plays a far greater (and, above all, a far different) role as a factor of
power, or as an outright political force. How does the power of truth operate?
How does truth as a factor of power work? How can its power-as power-be
realized?

VIII

INDIVIDUALS can be
alienated from themselves only because there is something in them to alienate.
The terrain of this violation is their authentic existence. Living the truth is
thus woven directly into the texture of living a lie. It is the repressed
alternative, the authentic aim to which living a lie is an inauthentic
response. Only against this background does living a lie make any sense: it
exists because of that background. In its excusatory, chimerical rootedness in
the human order, it is a response to nothing other than the human
predisposition to truth. Under the orderly surface of the life of lies,
therefore, there slumbers the hidden sphere of life in its real aims, of its
hidden openness to truth.

The singular, explosive, incalculable political power of living within the
truth resides in the fact that living openly within the truth has an ally,
invisible to be sure, but omnipresent: this hidden sphere. It is from this
sphere that life lived openly in the truth grows; it is to this sphere that it
speaks, and in it that it finds understanding. This is where the potential for
communication exists. But this place is hidden and therefore, from the
perspective of power, very dangerous. The complex ferment that takes place
within it goes on in semidarkness, and by the time it finally surfaces into the
light of day as an assortment of shocking surprises to the system, it is
usually too late to cover them up in the usual fashion. Thus they create a
situation in which the regime is confounded, invariably causing panic and
driving it to react in inappropriate ways.

It seems that the primary breeding ground for what might, in the widest
possible sense of the word, be understood as an opposition in the
post-totalitarian system is living within the truth. The confrontation between
these opposition forces and the powers that be, of course, will obviously take
a form essentially different from that typical of an open society or a
classical dictatorship. Initially, this confrontation does not take place on
the level of real, institutionalized, quantifiable power which relies on the
various instruments of power, but on a different level altogether: the level of
human consciousness and conscience, the existential level. The effective range
of this special power cannot be measured in terms of disciples, voters, or
soldiers, because it lies spread out in the fifth column of social
consciousness, in the hidden aims of life, in human beings' repressed longing
for dignity and fundamental rights, for the realization of their real social
and political interests. Its power, therefore, does not reside in the strength
of definable political or social groups, but chiefly in the strength of a
potential, which is hidden throughout the whole of society, including the
official power structures of that society. Therefore this power does not rely
on soldiers of its own, but on the soldiers of the enemy as it were—that is to
say, on everyone who is living within the lie and who may be struck at any
moment (in theory, at least) by the force of truth (or who, out of an
instinctive desire to protect their position, may at least adapt to that
force). It is a bacteriological weapon, so to speak, utilized when conditions
are ripe by a single civilian to disarm an entire division. This power does not
participate in any direct struggle for power; rather, it makes its influence
felt in the obscure arena of being itself. The hidden movements it gives rise
to there, however, can issue forth (when, where, under what circumstances, and
to what extent are difficult to predict) in something visible: a real political
act or event, a social movement, a sudden explosion of civil unrest, a sharp
conflict inside an apparently monolithic power structure, or simply an
irrepressible transformation in the social and intellectual climate. And since
all genuine problems and matters of critical importance are hidden beneath a
thick crust of lies, it is never quite clear when the proverbial last straw will
fall, or what that straw will be. This, too, is why the regime prosecutes,
almost as a reflex action preventively, even the most modest attempts to live
within the truth.

Why was Solzhenitsyn driven out of his own country? Certainly not because
he represented a unit of real power, that is, not because any of the regime's
representatives felt he might unseat them and take their place in government.
Solzhenitsyn's expulsion was something else: a desperate attempt to plug up the
dreadful wellspring of truth, a truth which might cause incalculable
transformations in social consciousness, which in turn might one day produce
political debacles unpredictable in their consequences. And so the post-totalitarian
system behaved in a characteristic way: it defended the integrity of the world
of appearances in order to defend itself. For the crust presented by the life
of lies is made of strange stuff. As long as it seals off hermetically the
entire society, it appears to be made of stone. But the moment someone breaks
through in one place, when one person cries out, "The emperor is
naked!"—when a single person breaks the rules of the game, thus exposing
it as a game—everything suddenly appears in another light and the whole crust
seems then to be made of a tissue on the point of tearing and disintegrating
uncontrollably.

When I speak of living within the truth, I naturally do not have in mind
only products of conceptual thought, such as a protest or a letter written by a
group of intellectuals. It can be any means by which a person or a group
revolts against manipulation: anything from a letter by intellectuals to a
workers' strike, from a rock concert to a student demonstration, from refusing
to vote in the farcical elections to making an open speech at some official congress,
or even a hunger strike, for instance. If the suppression of the aims of life
is a complex process, and if it is based on the multifaceted manipulation of
all expressions of life, then, by the same token, every free expression of life
indirectly threatens the post-totalitarian system politically, including forms
of expression to which, in other social systems, no one would attribute any
potential political significance, not to mention explosive power.

The Prague Spring is usually understood as a clash between two groups on
the level of real power: those who wanted to maintain the system as it was and
those who wanted to reform it. It is frequently forgotten, however, that this
encounter was merely the final act and the inevitable consequence of a long
drama originally played out chiefly in the theatre of the spirit and the
conscience of society. And that somewhere at the beginning of this drama, there
were individuals who were willing to live within the truth, even when things
were at their worst. These people had no access to real power, nor did they
aspire to it. The sphere in which they were living the truth was not
necessarily even that of political thought. They could equally have been poets,
painters, musicians, or simply ordinary citizens who were able to maintain
their human dignity. Today it is naturally difficult to pinpoint when and
through which hidden, winding channel a certain action or attitude influenced a
given milieu, and to trace the virus of truth as it slowly spread through the
tissue of the life of lies, gradually causing it to disintegrate. One thing,
however, seems clear: the attempt at political reform was not the cause of'
society's reawakening, but rather the final outcome of that reawakening.

I think the present also can be better understood in the light of this
experience. The confrontation between a thousand Chartists and the
post-totalitarian system would appear to be politically hopeless. This is true,
of course, if we look at it through the traditional lens of the open political
system, in which, quite naturally, every political force is measured chiefly in
terms of the positions it holds on the level of real power. Given that
perspective, a mini-party like the Charter would certainly not stand a chance.
If, however, this confrontation is seen against the background of what we know
about power in the post-totalitarian system, it appears in a fundamentally
different light. For the time being, it is impossible to say with any precision
what impact the appearance of Charter 77, its existence, and its work has had
in the hidden sphere, and how the Charter's attempt to rekindle civic
self-awareness and confidence is regarded there. Whether, when, and how this
investment will eventually produce dividends in the form of specific political
changes is even less possible to predict. But that, of course, is all part of
living within the truth. As an existential solution, it takes individuals back
to the solid ground of their own identity; as politics, it throws them into a
game of chance where the stakes are all or nothing. For this reason it is
undertaken only by those for whom the former is worth risking the latter, or
who have come to the conclusion that there is no other way to conduct real
politics in Czechoslovakia today. Which, by the way, is the same thing: this
conclusion can be reached only by someone who is unwilling to sacrifice his own
human identity to politics, or rather, who does not believe in a politics that
requires such a sacrifice.

The more thoroughly the post-totalitarian system frustrates any rival
alternative on the level of real power, as well as any form of politics
independent of the laws of its own automatism, the more definitively the center
of gravity of any potential political threat shifts to the area of the existential
and the pre-political: usually without any conscious effort, living within the
truth becomes the one natural point of departure for all activities that work
against the automatism of the system. And even if such activities ultimately
grow beyond the area of living within the truth (which means they are
transformed into various parallel structures, movements, institutions, they
begin to be regarded as political activity, they bring real pressure to bear on
the official structures and begin in fact to have a certain influence on the
level of real power), they always carry with them the specific hallmark of
their origins. Therefore it seems to me that not even the so-called dissident
movements can be properly understood without constantly bearing in mind this
special background from which they emerge.

IX

THE PROFOUND
crisis of human identity brought on by living within a lie, a crisis which in
turn makes such a life possible, certainly possesses a moral dimension as well;
it appears, among other things, as a deep moral crisis in society. A person who
has been seduced by the consumer value system, whose identity is dissolved in
an amalgam of the accouterments of mass civilization, and who has no roots in
the order of being, no sense of responsibility for anything higher than his own
personal survival, is a demoralized person. The system depends on this
demoralization, deepens it, is in fact a projection of it into society.

Living within the truth, as humanity's revolt against an enforced position,
is, on the contrary, an attempt to regain control over one's own sense of
responsibility. In other words, it is clearly a moral act, not only because one
must pay so dearly for it, but principally because it is not self-serving: the
risk may bring rewards in the form of a general amelioration in the situation,
or it may not. In this regard, as I stated previously, it is an all-or-nothing
gamble, and it is difficult to imagine a reasonable person embarking on such a
course merely because he reckons that sacrifice today will bring rewards
tomorrow, be it only in the form of general gratitude. (By the way, the
representatives of power invariably come to terms with those who live within
the truth by persistently ascribing utilitarian motivations to them-a lust for
power or fame or wealth-and thus they try, at least, to implicate them in their
own world, the world of general demoralization.)

If living within the truth in the post-totalitarian system becomes the
chief breeding ground for independent, alternative political ideas, then all
considerations about the nature and future prospects of these ideas must
necessarily reflect this moral dimension as a political phenomenon. (And if the
revolutionary Marxist belief about morality as a product of the
"superstructure" inhibits any of our friends from realizing the full
significance of this dimension and, in one way or another, from including it in
their view of the world, it is to their own detriment: an anxious fidelity to
the postulates of that world view prevents them from properly understanding the
mechanisms of their own political influence, thus paradoxically making them
precisely what they, as Marxists, so often suspect others of being—victims of
"false consciousness.") The very special political significance of morality
in the post-totalitarian system is a phenomenon that is at the very least
unusual in modern political history, a phenomenon that might well have-as I
shall soon attempt to show—far-reaching consequences.

X

UNDENIABLY, the
most important political event in Czechoslovakia after the advent of the Husák
leadership in 1969 was the appearance of Charter 77. The spiritual and
intellectual climate surrounding its appearance, however, was not the product
of any immediate political event. That climate was created by the trial of some
young musicians associated with a rock group called "The Plastic People of
the Universe." Their trial was not a confrontation of two differing
political forces or conceptions, but two differing conceptions of life. On the
one hand, there was the sterile puritanism of the post-totalitarian
establishment and, on the other hand, unknown young people who wanted no more
than to be able to live within the truth, to play the music they enjoyed, to
sing songs that were relevant to their lives, and to live freely in dignity and
partnership. These people had no past history of political activity. They were
not highly motivated members of the opposition with political ambitions, nor
were they former politicians expelled from the power structures. They had been
given every opportunity to adapt to the status quo, to accept the principles of
living within a lie and thus to enjoy life undisturbed by the authorities. Yet
they decided on a different course. Despite this, or perhaps precisely because
of it, their case had a very special impact on everyone who had not yet given
up hope. Moreover, when the trial took place, a new mood had begun to surface
after the years of waiting, of apathy and of skepticism toward various forms of
resistance. People were "tired of being tired"; they were fed up with
the stagnation, the inactivity, barely hanging on in the hope that things might
improve after all. In some ways the trial was the final straw. Many groups of
differing tendencies which until then had remained isolated from each other,
reluctant to cooperate, or which were committed to forms of action that made
cooperation difficult, were suddenly struck with the powerful realization that
freedom is indivisible. Everyone understood that an attack on the Czech musical
underground was an attack on a most elementary and important thing, something
that in fact bound everyone together: it was an attack on the very notion of
living within the truth, on the real aims of life. The freedom to play rock
music was understood as a human freedom and thus as essentially the same as the
freedom to engage in philosophical and political reflection, the freedom to
write, the freedom to express and defend the various social and political
interests of society. People were inspired to feel a genuine sense of
solidarity with the young musicians and they came to realize that not standing
up for the freedom of others, regardless of how remote their means of
creativity or their attitude to life, meant surrendering one's own freedom. (There
is no freedom without equality before the law, and there is no equality before
the law without freedom; Charter 77 has given this ancient notion a new and
characteristic dimension, which has immensely important implications for modern
Czech history. What Sládeček, the author of the book Sixty-eight, in a brilliant analysis, calls the "principle of
exclusion," lies at the root of all our present-day moral and political
misery. This principle was born at the end of the Second World War in that
strange collusion of democrats and communists and was subsequently developed
further and further, right to the bitter end. For the first time in decades
this principle has been overcome, by Charter 77: all those united in the
Charter have, for the first time, become equal partners. Charter 77 is not
merely a coalition of communists and noncommunists—that would be nothing
historically new and, from the moral and political point of view, nothing
revolutionary—but it is a community that is a priori open to anyone, and no one
in it is a priori assigned an inferior position.) This was the climate, then,
in which Charter 77 was created. Who could have foreseen that the prosecution
of one or two obscure rock groups would have such far-reaching consequences?

I think that the origins of Charter 77 illustrate very well what I have
already suggested above: that in the post-totalitarian system, the real
background to the movements that gradually assume political significance does
not usually consist of overtly political events or confrontations between
different forces or concepts that are openly political. These movements for the
most part originate elsewhere, in the far broader area of the
"pre-political," where living within a lie confronts living within
the truth, that is, where the demands of the post-totalitarian system conflict
with the real aims of life. These real aims can naturally assume a great many
forms. Sometimes they appear as the basic material or social interests of a
group or an individual; at other times, they may appear as certain intellectual
and spiritual interests; at still other times, they may be the most fundamental
of existential demands, such as the simple longing of people to live their own
lives in dignity. Such a conflict acquires a political character, then, not
because of the elementary political nature of the aims demanding to be heard
but simply because, given the complex system of manipulation on which the
post-totalitarian system is founded and on which it is also dependent, every
free human act or expression, every attempt to live within the truth, must
necessarily appear as a threat to the system and, thus, as something which is
political par excellence. Any eventual political articulation of the movements
that grow out of this "pre-political" hinterland is secondary. It
develops and matures as a result of a subsequent confrontation with the system,
and not because it started off as a political program, project, or impulse.

Once again, the events of 1968 confirm this. The communist politicians who
were trying to reform the system came forward with their program not because
they had suddenly experienced a mystical enlightenment, but because they were
led to do so by continued and increasing pressure from areas of life that had
nothing to do with politics in the traditional sense of the word. In fact, they
were trying in political ways to solve the social conflicts (which in fact were
confrontations between the aims of the system and the aims of life) that almost
every level of society had been experiencing daily, and had been thinking about
with increasing openness for years. Backed by this living resonance throughout
society, scholars and artists had defined the problem in a wide variety of ways
and students were demanding solutions.

The genesis of Charter 77 also illustrates the special political
significance of the moral aspect of things that I have mentioned. Charter 77
would have been unimaginable without that powerful sense of solidarity among
widely differing groups, and without the sudden realization that it was
impossible to go on waiting any longer, and that the truth had to be spoken
loudly and collectively, regardless of the virtual certainty of sanctions and
the uncertainty of any tangible results in the immediate future. "There
are some things worth suffering for," Jan Patočka wrote shortly before his
death. I think that Chartists understand this not only as Patočka's legacy, but
also as the best explanation of why they do what they do.

Seen from the outside, and chiefly from the vantage point of the system and
its power structure, Charter 77 came as a surprise, as a bolt out of the blue.
It was not a bolt out of the blue, of course, but that impression is
understandable, since the ferment that led to it took place in the "hidden
sphere," in that semidarkness where things are difficult to chart or
analyze. The chances of predicting the appearance of the Charter were just as
slight as the chances are now of predicting where it will lead. Once again, it
was that shock, so typical of moments when something from the hidden sphere
suddenly bursts through the moribund surface of living within a lie. The more
one is trapped in the world of appearances, the more surprising it is when
something like that happens.

XI

IN SOCIETIES under
the post-totalitarian system, all political life in the traditional sense has
been eliminated. People have no opportunity to express themselves politically
in public, let alone to organize politically. The gap that results is filled by
ideological ritual. In such a situation, people’s interest in political matters
naturally dwindles and independent political thought, insofar as it exists at
all, is seen by the majority as unrealistic, farfetched, a kind of
self-indulgent game, hopelessly distant from their everyday concerns; something
admirable, perhaps, but quite pointless, because it is on the one hand entirely
utopian and on the other hand extraordinarily dangerous, in view of the unusual
vigor with which any move in that direction is persecuted by the regime.

Yet even in such societies, individuals and groups of people exist who do
not abandon politics as a vocation and who, in one way or another, strive to
think independently, to express themselves and in some cases even to organize
politically, because that is a part of their attempt to live within the truth.

The fact that these people exist and work is in itself immensely important
and worthwhile. Even in the worst of times, they maintain the continuity of
political thought. If some genuine political impulse emerges from this or that
"pre-political" confrontation and is properly articulated early
enough, thus increasing its chances of relative success, then this is
frequently due to these isolated generals without an army who, because they
have maintained the continuity of political thought in the face of enormous
difficulties, can at the right moment enrich the new impulse with the fruits of
their own political thinking. Once again, there is ample evidence for this
process in Czechoslovakia. Almost all those who were political prisoners in the
early 1970s, who had apparently been made to suffer in vain because of their
quixotic efforts to work politically among an utterly apathetic and demoralized
society, belong today-inevitably-among the most active Chartists. In Charter
77, the moral legacy of their earlier sacrifices is valued, and they have
enriched this movement with their experience and that element of political
thinking.

And yet it seems to me that the thought and activity of those friends who
have never given up direct political work and who are always ready to assume
direct political responsibility very often suffer from one chronic fault: an
insufficient understanding of the historical uniqueness of the post-totalitarian
system as a social and political reality. They have little understanding of the
specific nature of power that is typical for this system and therefore they
overestimate the importance of direct political work in the traditional sense.
Moreover, they fail to appreciate the political significance of those
"pre-political" events and processes that provide the living humus
from which genuine political change usually springs. As political actors—or,
rather, as people with political ambitions—they frequently try to pick up where
natural political life left off. They maintain models of behavior that may have
been appropriate in more normal political circumstances and thus, without
really being aware of it, they bring an outmoded way of thinking, old habits,
conceptions, categories, and notions to bear on circumstances that are quite
new and radically different, without first giving adequate thought to the
meaning and substance of such things in the new circumstances, to what politics
as such means now, to what sort of thing can have political impact and potential,
and in what way- Because such people have been excluded from the structures of
power and are no longer able to influence those structures directly (and
because they remain faithful to traditional notions of politics established in
more or less democratic societies or in classical dictatorships) they
frequently, in a sense, lose touch with reality. Why make compromises with
reality, they say, when none of our proposals will ever be accepted anyway?
Thus they find themselves in a world of genuinely utopian thinking.

As I have already tried to indicate, however, genuinely far-reaching
political events do not emerge from the same sources and in the same way in the
post-totalitarian system as they do in a democracy. And if a large portion of
the public is indifferent to, even skeptical of, alternative political models
and programs and the private establishment of opposition political parties,
this is not merely because there is a general feeling of apathy toward public
affairs and a loss of that sense of higher responsibility; in other words, it
is not just a consequence of the general demoralization. There is also a bit of
healthy social instinct at work in this attitude. It is as if people sensed
intuitively that "nothing is what it seems any longer," as the saying
goes, and that from now on, therefore, things must be done entirely differently
as well.

If some of the most important political impulses in Soviet bloc countries
in recent years have come initially—that is, before being felt on the level of actual
power—from mathematicians, philosophers, physicians, writers, historians,
ordinary workers, and so on, more frequently than from politicians, and if the
driving force behind the various dissident movements comes from so many people
in nonpolitical professions, this is not because these people are more clever
than those who see themselves primarily as politicians. It is because those who
are not politicians are also not so bound by traditional political thinking and
political habits and therefore, paradoxically, they are more aware of genuine
political reality and more sensitive to what can and should be done under the
circumstances.

There is no way around it: no matter how beautiful an alternative political
model can be, it can no longer speak to the "hidden sphere," inspire
people and society, call for real political ferment. The real sphere of
potential politics in the post-totalitarian system is elsewhere: in the
continuing and cruel tension between the complex demands of that system and the
aims of life, that is, the elementary need of human beings to live, to a
certain extent at least, in harmony with themselves, that is, to live in a
bearable way, not to be humiliated by their superiors and officials, not to be
continually watched by the police, to be able to express themselves freely, to
find an outlet for their creativity, to enjoy legal security, and so on.
Anything that touches this field concretely, anything that relates to this
fundamental, omnipresent, and living tension, will inevitably speak to people.
Abstract projects for an ideal political or economic order do not interest them
to anything like the same extent—and rightly so—not only because everyone knows
how little chance they have of succeeding, but also because today people feel
that the less political policies are derived from a concrete and human here and
now and the more they fix their sights on an abstract "someday," the
more easily they can degenerate into new forms of human enslavement. People who
live in the post-totalitarian system know only too well that the question of
whether one or several political parties are in power, and how these parties
define and label themselves, is of far less importance than the question of
whether or not it is possible to live like a human being.

To shed the burden of traditional political categories and habits and open
oneself up fully to the world of human existence and then to draw political
conclusions only after having analyzed it: this is not only politically more
realistic but at the same time, from the point of view of an "ideal state
of affairs," politically more promising as well. A genuine, profound, and
lasting change for the better—as I shall attempt to show—can no longer result
from the victory (were such a victory possible) of any particular traditional
political conception, which can ultimately be only external, that is, a structural
or systemic conception. More than ever before, such a change will have to
derive from human existence, from the fundamental reconstitution of the position
of people in the world, their relationships to themselves and to each other,
and to the universe. If a better economic and political model is to be created,
then perhaps more than ever before it must derive from profound existential and
moral changes in society. This is not something that can be designed and
introduced like a new car. If it is to be more than just a new variation of the
old degeneration, it must above all be an expression of life in the process of
transforming itself. A better system will not automatically ensure a better
life. In fact, the opposite is true: only by creating a better life can a
better system be developed.

Once more I repeat that I am not underestimating the importance of
political thought and conceptual political work. On the contrary, I think that
genuine political thought and genuinely political work is precisely what we
continually fail to achieve. If I say "genuine," however, I have in
mind the kind of thought and conceptual work that has freed itself of all the
traditional political schemata that have been imported into our circumstances
from a world that will never return (and whose return, even were it possible,
would provide no permanent solution to the most important problems).

The Second and Fourth Internationals, like many other political powers and
organizations, may naturally provide significant political support for various
efforts of ours, but neither of them can solve our problems for us. They
operate in a different world and are a product of different circumstances.
Their theoretical concepts can be interesting and instructive to us, but one
thing is certain: we cannot solve our problems simply by identifying with these
organizations. And the attempt in our country to place what we do in the
context of some of the discussions that dominate political life in democratic
societies often seems like sheer folly. For example, is it possible to talk
seriously about whether we want to change the system or merely reform it? In
the circumstances under which we live, this is a pseudo-problem, since for the
time being there is simply no way we can accomplish either goal. We are not
even clear about where reform ends and change begins. We know from a number of
harsh experiences that neither reform nor change is in itself a guarantee of
anything. We know that ultimately it is all the same to us whether or not the
system in which we live, in the light of a particular doctrine, appears changed
or reformed. Our concern is whether we can live with dignity in such a system,
whether it serves people rather than people serving it. We are struggling to
achieve this with the means available to us, and the means it makes sense to
employ. Western journalists, submerged in the political banalities in which
they live, may label our approach as overly legalistic, as too risky,
revisionist, counterrevolutionary, bourgeois, communist, or as too right-wing
or left-wing. But this is the very last thing that interests us.

XII

ONE CONCEPT that
is a constant source of confusion chiefly because it has been imported into our
circumstances from circumstances that are entirely different is the concept of
an opposition. What exactly is an opposition in the post-totalitarian system?

In democratic societies with a traditional parliamentary system of government,
political opposition is understood as a political force on the level of actual
power (most frequently a party or coalition of parties), which is not a part of
the government. It offers an alternative political program, it has ambitions to
govern, and it is recognized and respected by the government in power as a
natural element in the political life of the country. It seeks to spread its
influence by political means, and competes for power on the basis of
agreed-upon legal regulations.

In addition to this form of opposition, there exists the phenomenon of the
"extra-parliamentary opposition," which again consists of forces
organized more or less on the level of actual power, but which operate outside
the rules created by the system, and which employ different means than are
usual within that framework.

In classical dictatorships, the term "opposition" is understood
to mean the political forces which have also come out with an alternative
political program. They operate either legally or on the outer limits of
legality, but in any case they cannot compete for power within the limits of
some agreed-upon regulations. Or the term "opposition" may be applied
to forces preparing for a violent confrontation with the ruling power, or who
feel themselves to be in this state of confrontation already, such as various
guerrilla groups or liberation movements.

An opposition in
the post-totalitarian system does not exist in any of these senses. In what
way, then, can the term be used?

1. Occasionally the term "opposition" is applied, mainly by
Western journalists, to persons or groups inside the power structure who find
themselves in a state of hidden conflict with the highest authorities. The
reasons for this conflict may be certain differences (not very sharp differences,
naturally) of a conceptual nature, but more frequently it is quite simply a
longing for power or a personal antipathy to others who represent that power.

2. Opposition here can also be understood as everything that does or can
have an indirect political effect in the sense already mentioned, that is,
everything the post-totalitarian system feels threatened by, which in fact
means everything it is threatened by. In this sense, the opposition is every
attempt to live within the truth, from the greengrocer's refusal to put the
slogan in his window to a freely written poem; in other words, everything in
which the genuine aims of life go beyond the limits placed on them by the aims
of the system.

3. More frequently, however, the opposition is usually understood (again,
largely by Western journalists) as groups of people who make public their
nonconformist stances and critical opinions, who make no secret of their
independent thinking and who, to a greater or lesser degree, consider
themselves a political force. In this sense, the notion of an opposition more
or less overlaps with the notion of dissent, although, of course, there are
great differences in the degree to which that label is accepted or rejected. It
depends not only on the extent to which these people understand their power as
a directly political force, and on whether they have ambitions to participate
in actual power, but also on how each of them understands the notion of an
opposition.

Again, here is an example: in its original declaration, Charter 77
emphasized that it was not an opposition because it had no intention of
presenting an alternative political program. It sees its mission as something
quite different, for it has not presented such programs. In fact, if the
presenting of an alternative program defines the nature of an opposition in
post-totalitarian states, then the Charter cannot be considered an opposition.

The Czechoslovak government, however, has considered Charter 77 as an
expressly oppositional association from the very beginning, and has treated it
accordingly. This means that the government—and this is only natural—understands
the term "opposition" more or less as I defined it in point 2, that
is, as everything that manages to avoid total manipulation and which therefore
denies the principle that the system has an absolute claim on the individual.

If we accept this definition of opposition, then of course we must, along
with the government, consider the Charter a genuine opposition, because it
represents a serious challenge to the integrity of post-totalitarian power,
founded as it is on the universality of living with a lie.

It is a different matter, however, when we look at the extent to which
individual signatories of Charter 77 think of themselves as an opposition. My
impression is that most base their understanding of the term
"opposition" on the traditional meaning of the word as it became
established in democratic societies (or in classical dictatorships); therefore,
they understand opposition, even in Czechoslovakia, as a politically defined
force which, although it does not operate on the level of actual power, and
even less within the framework of certain rules respected by the government,
would still not reject the opportunity to participate in actual power because it
has, in a sense, an alternative political program whose proponents are prepared
to accept direct political responsibility for it. Given this notion of an
opposition, some Chartists—the great majority—do not see themselves in this
way. Others—a minority—do, even though they fully respect the fact that there
is no room within Charter 77 for "oppositional" activity in this
sense. At the same time, however, perhaps every Chartist is familiar enough
with the specific nature of conditions in the post-totalitarian system to
realize that it is not only the struggle for human rights that has its own
peculiar political power, but incomparably more "innocent" activities
as well, and therefore they can be understood as an aspect of opposition. No
Chartist can really object to being considered an opposition in this sense.

There is another circumstance, however, that considerably complicates
matters. For many decades, the power ruling society in the Soviet bloc has used
the label "opposition" as the blackest of indictments, as synonymous
with the word "enemy." To brand someone "a member of the
opposition" is tantamount to saying he is trying to overthrow the
government and put an end to socialism (naturally in the pay of the
imperialists). There have been times when this label led straight to the
gallows, and of course this does not encourage people to apply the same label
to themselves. Moreover, it is only a word, and what is actually done is more
important than how it is labeled.

The final reason why many reject such a term is because there is something
negative about the notion of an "opposition." People who so define
themselves do so in relation to a prior "position." In other words,
they relate themselves specifically to the power that rules society and through
it, define themselves, deriving their own position from the position of the
regime. For people who have simply decided to live within the truth, to say
aloud what they think, to express their solidarity with their fellow citizens,
to create as they want and simply to live in harmony with their better self, it
is naturally disagreeable to feel required to define their own original and
positive position negatively, in terms of something else, and to think of
themselves primarily as people who are against something, not simply as people
who are what they are.

Obviously, the only way to avoid misunderstanding is to say clearly—before
one starts using them—in what sense the terms "opposition" and
"member of the opposition" are being used and how they are in fact to
be understood in our circumstances.

XIII

IF THE term
"opposition" has been imported from democratic societies into the
post-totalitarian system without general agreement on what the word means in
conditions that are so different, then the term "dissident" was, on
the contrary, chosen by Western journalists and is now generally accepted as
the label for a phenomenon peculiar to the post-totalitarian system and almost
never occurring-at least not in that form-in democratic societies.

Who are these "dissidents"?

It seems that the term is applied primarily to citizens of the Soviet bloc
who have decided to live within the truth and who, in addition, meet the
following criteria:

1. They express their nonconformist positions and critical opinions
publicly and systematically, within the very strict limits available to them,
and because of this, they are known in the West.

2. Despite being unable to publish at home and despite every possible form
of persecution by their governments, they have, by virtue of their attitudes,
managed to win a certain esteem, both from the public and from their
government, and thus they actually enjoy a very limited and very strange degree
of indirect, actual power in their own milieu as well. This either protects
them from the worst forms of persecution, or at least it ensures that if they
are persecuted, it will mean certain political complications for their
governments.

3. The horizon of their critical attention and their commitment reaches
beyond the narrow context of their immediate surroundings or special interests
to embrace more general causes and, thus, their work becomes political in
nature, although the degree to which they think of themselves as a directly
political force may vary a great deal.

4. They are people who lean toward intellectual pursuits, that is, they are
"writing" people, people for whom the written word is the primary—and
often the only—political medium they command, and that can gain them attention,
particularly from abroad. Other ways in which they seek to live within the
truth are either lost to the foreign observer in the elusive local milieu or—if
they reach beyond this local framework—they appear to be only somewhat less
visible complements to what they have written.

5. Regardless of their actual vocations, these people are talked about in
the West more frequently in terms of their activities as committed citizens, or
in terms of the critical, political aspects of their work, than in terms of the
real work they do in their own fields. From personal experience, I know that
there is an invisible line you cross-without even wanting to or becoming aware
of it-beyond which they cease to treat you as a writer who happens to be a
concerned citizen and begin talking of you as a "dissident" who
almost incidentally (in his spare time, perhaps?) happens to write plays as
well.

Unquestionably, there are people who meet all of these criteria. What is
debatable is whether we should be using a special term for a group defined in
such an essentially accidental way, and specifically, whether they should be
called "dissidents." It does happen, however, and there is clearly
nothing we can do about it. Sometimes, to facilitate communication, we even use
the label ourselves, although it is done with distaste, rather ironically, and
almost always in quotation marks.

Perhaps it is now appropriate to outline some of the reasons why
"dissidents" themselves are not very happy to be referred to in this
way. In the first place, the word is problematic from an etymological point of
view. A "dissident," we are told in our press, means something like
"renegade" or "backslider." But dissidents do not consider
themselves renegades for the simple reason that they are not primarily denying
or rejecting anything. On the contrary, they have tried to affirm their own
human identity, and if they reject anything at all, then it is merely what was
false and alienating in their lives, that aspect of living within a lie.

But that is not the most important thing. The term "dissident"
frequently implies a special profession, as if, along with the more normal
vocations, there were another special one— grumbling about the state of things.
In fact, a "dissident" is simply a physicist, a sociologist, a
worker, a poet, individuals who are doing what they feel they must and,
consequently, who find themselves in open conflict with the regime. This
conflict has not come about through any conscious intention on their part, but
simply through the inner logic of their thinking, behavior, or work (often
confronted with external circumstances more or less beyond their control). They
have not, in other words, consciously decided to be professional malcontents,
rather as one decides to be a tailor or a blacksmith.

In fact, of course, they do not usually discover they are "dissidents"
until long after they have actually become one. "Dissent" springs
from motivations far different from the desire for titles or fame. In short,
they do not decide to become "dissidents," and even if they were to
devote twenty-four hours a day to it, it would still not be a profession, but
primarily an existential attitude. Moreover, it is an attitude that is in no
way the exclusive property of those who have earned themselves the title of
"dissident" just because they happen to fulfill those accidental
external conditions already mentioned. There are thousands of nameless people
who try to live within the truth and millions who want to but cannot, perhaps
only because to do so in the circumstances in which they live, they would need
ten times the courage of those who have already taken the first step. If
several dozen are randomly chosen from among all these people and put into a
special category, this can utterly distort the general picture. It does so in
two different ways. Either it suggests that "dissidents" are a group
of prominent people, a protected species who are permitted to do things others
are not and whom the government may even be cultivating as living proof of its
generosity; or it lends support to the illusion that since there is no more than
a handful of malcontents to whom not very much is really being done, all the
rest are therefore content, for were they not so, they would be
"dissidents" too.

But that is not all. This categorization also unintentionally supports the
impression that the primary concern of these "dissidents" is some
vested interest that they share as a group, as though their entire argument
with the government were no more than a rather abstruse conflict between two
opposed groups, a conflict that leaves society out of it altogether. But such
an impression profoundly contradicts the real importance of the
"dissident" attitude, which stands or falls on its interest in
others, in what ails society as a whole, in other words, on an interest in all
those who do not speak up. If "dissidents" have any kind of authority
at all, and if they have not been exterminated long ago like exotic insects
that have appeared where they have no business being, then this is not because
the government holds this exclusive group and their exclusive ideas in such
awe, but because it is perfectly aware of the potential political power of
living within the truth rooted in the hidden sphere, and well aware too of the
kind of world "dissent" grows out of and the world it addresses: the
everyday human world, the world of daily tension between the aims of life and
the aims of the system. (Can there be any better evidence of this than the
government's action after Charter 77 appeared, when it launched a campaign to
compel the entire nation to declare that Charter 77 was wrong? Those millions
of signatures proved, among other things, that just the opposite was true.) The
political organs and the police do not lavish such enormous attention on
"dissidents"—which may give the impression that the government fears
them as they might fear an alternative power clique-because they actually are
such a power clique, but because they are ordinary people with ordinary cares,
differing from the rest only in that they say aloud what the rest cannot say or
are afraid to say. I have already mentioned Solzhenitsyn's political influence:
it does not reside in some exclusive political power he possesses as an
individual, but in the experience of those millions of Gulag victims which he
simply amplified and communicated to millions of other people of good will.

To institutionalize a select category of well-known or prominent
"dissidents" means in fact to deny the most intrinsic moral aspect of
their activity. As we have seen, the "dissident" movement grows out
of the principle of equality, founded on the notion that human rights and
freedoms are indivisible. After all, did no well-known "dissidents"
unite in KOR to defend unknown workers? And was it not precisely for this
reason that they became "well-known dissidents"? And did not the
well-known "dissidents" unite in Charter 77 after they had been
brought together in defense of those unknown musicians, and did they not unite
in the Charter precisely with them, and did they not become "well-known
dissidents" precisely because of that? It is truly a cruel paradox that
the more some citizens stand up in defense of other citizens, the more they are
labeled with a word that in effect separates them from those "other
citizens."

This explanation, I hope, will make clear the significance of the quotation
marks I have put around the word "dissident" throughout this essay.

XIV

AT THE time when
the Czech lands and Slovakia were an integral part of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire, and when there existed neither the historical nor the political,
psychological, nor social conditions that would have enabled the Czechs and
Slovaks to seek their identity outside the framework of this empire, Tomáš
Garrigue Masaryk established a Czechoslovak national program based on the
notion of "small-scale work" (drobna práce). By that he meant honest
and responsible work in widely different areas of life but within the existing
social order, work that would stimulate national creativity and national
self-confidence. Naturally he placed particular emphasis on intelligent and
enlightened upbringing and education, and on the moral and humanitarian aspects
of life. Masaryk believed that the only possible starting point for a more
dignified national destiny was humanity itself. Humanity's first task was to
create the conditions for a more human life; and in Masaryk's view, the task of
transforming the stature of the nation began with the transformation of human
beings.

This notion of "working for the good of the nation" took root in
Czechoslovak society and in many ways it was successful and is still alive
today. Along with those who exploit the notion as a sophisticated excuse for
collaborating with the regime, there are still many, even today, who genuinely
uphold the ideal and, in some areas at least, can point to indisputable
achievements. It is hard to say how much worse things would be if there were
not many hard-working people who simply refuse to give up and try constantly to
do the best they can, paying an unavoidable minimum to living within a lie so
that they might give their utmost to the authentic needs of society. These
people assume, correctly, that every piece of good work is an indirect
criticism of bad politics, and that there are situations where it is worthwhile
going this route, even though it means surrendering one's natural right to make
direct criticisms.

Today, however, there are very clear limitations to this attitude, even
compared to the situation in the 1960s. More and more frequently, those who
attempt to practice the principle of "small-scale work" come up against
the post-totalitarian system and find themselves facing a dilemma: either one
retreats from that position, dilutes the honesty, responsibility, and
consistency on which it is based, and simply adapts to circumstances (the
approach taken by the majority), or one continues on the way begun and
inevitably comes into conflict with the regime (the approach taken by a
minority).

If the notion of small-scale work was never intended as an imperative to
survive in the existing social and political structure at any cost (in which
case individuals who allowed themselves to be excluded from that structure
would necessarily appear to have given up "working for the nation"),
then today it is even less significant. There is no general model of behavior,
that is, no neat, universally valid way of determining the point at which
small-scale work ceases to be for the good of the nation and becomes
detrimental to the nation. It is more than clear, however, that the danger of
such a reversal is becoming more and more acute and that small-scale work, with
increasing frequency, is coming up against that limit beyond which avoiding
conflict means compromising its very essence.

In 1974, when I was employed in a brewery, my immediate superior was a
certain Š, a person well versed in the art of making beer. He was proud of his
profession and he wanted our brewery to brew good beer. He spent almost all his
time at work, continually thinking up improvements, and he frequently made the
rest of us feel uncomfortable because he assumed that we loved brewing as much
as he did. In the midst of the slovenly indifference to work that socialism
encourages, a more constructive worker would be difficult to imagine.

The brewery itself was managed by people who understood their work less and
were less fond of it, but who were politically more influential. They were
bringing the brewery to ruin and not only did they fail to react to any of Š's
suggestions, but they actually became increasingly hostile toward him and tried
in every way to thwart his efforts to do a good job. Eventually the situation
became so bad that Š felt compelled to write a lengthy letter to the manager's
superior, in which he attempted to analyze the brewery's difficulties. He
explained why it was the worst in the district and pointed to those
responsible.

His voice might have been heard. The manager, who was politically powerful
but otherwise ignorant of beer, a man who loathed workers and was given to
intrigue, might have been replaced and conditions in the brewery might have
been improved on the basis of Š's suggestions. Had this happened, it would have
been a perfect example of small-scale work in action. Unfortunately, the
precise opposite occurred: the manager of the brewery, who was a member of the
Communist Party’s district committee, had friends in higher places and he saw
to it that the situation was resolved in his favor. Š's analysis was described as
a "defamatory document" and Š himself was labeled a "political
saboteur." He was thrown out of the brewery and shifted to another one
where he was given a job requiring no skill. Here the notion of small-scale
work had come up against the wall of the post-totalitarian system. By speaking
the truth, Š had stepped out of line, broken the rules, cast himself out, and
he ended up as a subcitizen, stigmatized as an enemy. He could now say anything
he wanted, but he could never, as a matter of principle, expect to be heard. He
had become the "dissident" of the Eastern Bohemian Brewery.

I think this is a model case which, from another point of view, illustrates
what I have already said in the preceding section: you do not become a
"dissident" just because you decide one day to take up this most
unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility,
combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the
existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins
as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of
society. This is why our situation is not comparable to the Austro-Hungarian
Empire, when the Czech nation, in the worst period of Bach's absolutism, had
only one real "dissident," Karel Havlíček, who was imprisoned in
Brixen. Today, if we are not to be snobbish about it, we must admit that
"dissidents" can be found on every street corner.

To rebuke "dissidents" for having abandoned "small-scale
work" is simply absurd. "Dissent" is not an alternative to
Masaryk's notion, it is frequently its one possible outcome. I say "frequently"
in order to emphasize that this is not always the case. I am far from believing
that the only decent and responsible people are those who find themselves at
odds with the existing social and political structures. After all, the brew-master
Š might have won his battle. To condemn those who have kept their positions
simply because they have kept them, in other words, for not being
"dissidents," would be just as absurd as to hold them up as an
example to the "dissidents." In any case, it contradicts the whole
"dissident" attitude seen as an attempt to live within the truth-if
one judges human behavior not according to what it is and whether it is good or
not, but according to the personal circumstances such an attempt has brought
one to.

XV

OUR GREENGROCER’S
attempt to live within the truth may be confined to not doing certain things.
He decides not to put flags in his window when his only motive for putting them
there in the first place would have been to avoid being reported by the house
warden; he does not vote in elections that he considers false; he does not hide
his opinions from his superiors. In other words, he may go no further than
"merely" refusing to comply with certain demands made on him by the
system (which of course is not an insignificant step to take). This may,
however, grow into something more. The greengrocer may begin to do something
concrete, something that goes beyond an immediately personal self-defensive
reaction against manipulation, something that will manifest his newfound sense
of higher responsibility. He may, for example, organize his fellow greengrocers
to act together in defense of their interests. He may write letters to various
institutions, drawing their attention to instances of disorder and injustice
around him. He may seek out unofficial literature, copy it, and lend it to his
friends.

If what I have called living within the truth is a basic existential (and
of course potentially political) starting point for all those "independent
citizens' initiatives" and "dissident" or "opposition"
movements this does not mean that every attempt to live within the truth
automatically belongs in this category. On the contrary, in its most original
and broadest sense, living within the truth covers a vast territory whose outer
limits are vague and difficult to map, a territory full of modest expressions
of human volition, the vast majority of which will remain anonymous and whose
political impact will probably never be felt or described any more concretely
than simply as a part of a social climate or mood. Most of these expressions
remain elementary revolts against manipulation: you simply straighten your
backbone and live in greater dignity as an individual.

Here and there—thanks to the nature, the assumptions, and the professions of
some people, but also thanks to a number of accidental circumstances such as
the specific nature of the local milieu, friends, and so on—a more coherent and
visible initiative may emerge from this wide and anonymous hinterland, an
initiative that transcends "merely" individual revolt and is
transformed into more conscious, structured, and purposeful work. The point
where living within the truth ceases to be a mere negation of living with a lie
and becomes articulate in a particular way is the point at which something is
born that might be called the "independent spiritual, social, and
political life of society." This independent life is not separated from
the rest of life ("dependent life") by some sharply defined line.
Both types frequently co-exist in the same people. Nevertheless, its most
important focus is marked by a relatively high degree of inner emancipation. It
sails upon the vast ocean of the manipulated life like little boats, tossed by
the waves but always bobbing back as visible messengers of living within the
truth, articulating the suppressed aims of life.

What is this independent life of society? The spectrum of its expressions
and activities is naturally very wide. It includes everything from self-education
and thinking about the world, through free creative activity and its
communication to others, to the most varied free, civic attitudes, including
instances of independent social self-organization. In short, it is an area in
which living within the truth becomes articulate and materializes in a visible
way.

Thus what will later be referred to as "citizens' initiatives,"
"dissident movements," or even "oppositions," emerge, like
the proverbial one tenth of the iceberg visible above the water, from that
area, from the independent life of society. In other words, just as the
independent life of society develops out of living within the truth in the
widest sense of the word, as the distinct, articulated expression of that life,
so "dissent" gradually emerges from the independent life of society.
Yet there is a marked difference: if the independent life of society,
externally at least, can be understood as a higher form of living within the
truth, it is far less certain that "dissident" movements are
necessarily a higher form of the independent life of society. They are simply
one manifestation of it and, though they may be the most visible and, at first
glance, the most political (and most clearly articulated) expression of it,
they are far from necessarily being the most mature or even the most important,
not only in the general social sense but even in terms of direct political
influence. After all, "dissent" has been artificially removed from
its place of birth by having been given a special name. In fact, however, it is
not possible to think of it separated from the whole background out of which it
develops, of which it is an integral part, and from which it draws all its
vital strength. In any case, it follows from what has already been said about
the peculiarities of the post-totalitarian system that what appears to be the
most political of forces in a given moment, and what thinks of itself in such
terms, need not necessarily in fact be such a force. The extent to which it is
a real political force is due exclusively to its pre-political context.

What follows from this description? Nothing more and nothing less than
this: it is impossible to talk about what in fact "dissidents" do and
the effect of their work without first talking about the work of all those who,
in one way or an other, take part in the independent life of society and who
are not necessarily "dissidents" at all. They may be writers who
write as they wish without regard for censorship or official demands and who
issue their work— when official publishers refuse to print it—as samizdat. They
may be philosophers, historians, sociologists, and all those who practice
independent scholarship and, if it is impossible through official or
semi-official channels, who also circulate their work in samizdat or who
organize private discussions, lectures, and seminars. They may be teachers who
privately teach young people things that are kept from them in the state
schools; clergymen who either in office or, if they are deprived of their
charges, outside it, try to carry on a free religious life; painters,
musicians, and singers who practice their work regardless of how it is looked
upon by official institutions; everyone who shares this independent culture and
helps to spread it; people who, using the means available to them, try to
express and defend the actual social interests of workers, to put real meaning
back into trade unions or to form independent ones; people who are not afraid
to call the attention of officials to cases of injustice and who strive to see
that the laws are observed; and the different groups of young people who try to
extricate themselves from manipulation and live in their own way, in the spirit
of their own hierarchy of values. The list could go on.

Very few would think of calling all these people "dissidents."
And yet are not the well-known "dissidents" simply people like them?
Are not all these activities in fact what "dissidents" do as well? Do
they not produce scholarly work and publish it in samizdat? Do they not write
plays and novels and poems? Do they not lecture to students in private
"universities"? Do they not struggle against various forms of
injustice and attempt to ascertain and express the genuine social interests of
various sectors of the population?

After having tried to indicate the sources, the inner structure, and some
aspects of the "dissident" attitude as such, I have clearly shifted
my viewpoint from outside, as it were, to an investigation of what these
"dissidents" actually do, how their initiatives are manifested, and
where they lead.

The first conclusion to be drawn, then, is that the original and most
important sphere of activity, one that predetermines all the others, is simply
an attempt to create and support the independent life of society as an
articulated expression of living within the truth. In other words, serving
truth consistently, purposefully, and articulately, and organizing this
service. This is only natural, after all: if living within the truth is an
elementary starting point for every attempt made by people to oppose the
alienating pressure of the system, if it is the only meaningful basis of any
independent act of political import, and if, ultimately, it is also the most
intrinsic existential source of the "dissident" attitude, then it is
difficult to imagine that even manifest "dissent" could have any
other basis than the service of truth, the truthful life, and the attempt to
make room for the genuine aims of life.

XVI

THE
POST-TOTALITARIAN system is mounting a total assault on humans and humans stand
against it alone, abandoned and isolated. It is therefore entirely natural that
all the "dissident" movements are explicitly defensive movements:
they exist to defend human beings and the genuine aims of life against the aims
of the system.

Today the Polish group KOR is called the "Committee for Social
Self-Defense.” The word "defense" appears in the names of other
similar groups in Poland, but even the Soviet Helsinki monitoring group and our
own Charter 77 are clearly defensive in nature.

In terms of traditional politics, this program of defense is
understandable, even though it may appear minimal, provisional, and ultimately
negative. It offers no new conception, model, or ideology, and therefore it is
not politics in the proper sense of the word, since politics always assumes a positive
program and can scarcely limit itself to defending someone against something.

Such a view, I think, reveals the limitations of the traditionally political
way of looking at things. The post-totalitarian system, after all, is not the
manifestation of a particular political line followed by a particular
government. It is something radically different: it is a complex, profound, and
long-term violation of society, or rather the self-violation of society. To
oppose it merely by establishing a different political line and then striving
for a change in government would not only be unrealistic, it would be utterly
inadequate, for it would never come near to touching the root of the matter.
For some time now, the problem has no longer resided in a political line or
program: it is a problem of life itself.

Thus, defending the aims of life, defending humanity, is not only a more
realistic approach, since it can begin right now and is potentially more
popular because it concerns people's everyday lives; at the same time (and
perhaps precisely because of this) it is also an incomparably more consistent
approach because it aims at the very essence of things.

There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand
truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in
broad daylight. It seems to me that today, this "provisional,"
"minimal," and "negative" program—the "simple"
defense of people—is in a particular sense (and not merely in the circumstances
in which we live) an optimal and most positive program because it forces
politics to return to its only proper starting point, proper that is, if all
the old mistakes are to be avoided: individual people. In the democratic
societies, where the violence done to human beings is not nearly so obvious and
cruel, this fundamental revolution in politics has yet to happen, and some
things will probably have to get worse there before the urgent need for that
revolution is reflected in politics. In our world, precisely because of the misery
in which we find ourselves, it would seem that politics has already undergone
that transformation: the central concern of political thought is no longer
abstract visions of a self-redeeming, "positive" model (and of course
the opportunistic political practices that are the reverse of the same coin),
but rather the people who have so far merely been enslaved by those models and
their practices.

Every society, of course, requires some degree of organization. Yet if that
organization is to serve people, and not the other way around, then people will
have to be liberated and space created so that they may organize themselves in
meaningful ways. The depravity of the opposite approach, in which people are
first organized in one way or another (by someone who always knows best
"what the people need") so they may then allegedly be liberated, is
something we have known on our own skins only too well.

To sum up: most people who are too bound to the traditional political way
of thinking see the weaknesses of the "dissident" movements in their
purely defensive character. In contrast, I see that as their greatest strength.
I believe that this is precisely where these movements supersede the kind of
politics from whose point of view their program can seem so inadequate.

XVII

IN THE
"dissident" movements of the Soviet bloc, the defense of human beings
usually takes the form of a defense of human and civil rights as they are
entrenched in various official documents such as the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, the International Covenants on Human Rights, the Concluding Act
of the Helsinki Agreement, and the constitutions of individual states. These
movements set out to defend anyone who is being prosecuted for acting in the
spirit of those rights, and they in turn act in the same spirit in their work,
by insisting over and over again that the regime recognize and respect human
and civil rights, and by drawing attention to the areas of life where this is
not the case.

Their work, therefore, is based on the principle of legality: they operate
publicly and openly, insisting not only that their activity is in line with the
law, but that achieving respect for the law is one of their main aims. This
principle of legality, which provides both the point of departure and the framework
for their activities, is common to all "dissident" groups in the
Soviet bloc, even though individual groups have never worked out any formal
agreement on that point. This circumstance raises an important question: Why,
in conditions where a widespread and arbitrary abuse of power is the rule, is
there such a general and spontaneous acceptance of the principle of legality?

On the primary level, this stress on legality is a natural expression of
specific conditions that exist in the post-totalitarian system, and the
consequence of an elementary understanding of that specificity. If there are in
essence only two ways to struggle for a free society—that is, through legal
means and through (armed or unarmed) revolt—then it should be obvious at once
how inappropriate the latter alternative is in the post-totalitarian system.
Revolt is appropriate when conditions are clearly and openly in motion, during
a war, for example, or in situations where social or political conflicts are
coming to a head. It is appropriate in a classical dictatorship that is either just
setting itself up or is in a state of collapse. In other words, it is
appropriate where social forces of comparable strength (for example, a
government of occupation versus a nation fighting for its freedom) are
confronting each other on the level of actual power, or where there is a clear
distinction between the usurpers of power and the subjugated population, or
when society finds itself in a state of open crisis. Conditions in the
post-totalitarian system—except in extremely explosive situations like the one
in Hungary in 1956—are, of course, precisely the opposite. They are static and
stable, and social crises, for the most part, exist only latently (though they
run much deeper). Society is not sharply polarized on the level of actual
political power, but, as we have seen, the fundamental lines of conflict run
right through each person. In this situation, no attempt at revolt could ever
hope to set up even a minimum of resonance in the rest of society, because that
society is soporific, submerged in a consumer rat race and wholly involved in
the post-totalitarian system (that is, participating in it and acting as agents
of its automatism), and it would simply find anything like revolt unacceptable.
It would interpret the revolt as an attack upon itself and, rather than
supporting the revolt, it would very probably react by intensifying its bias
toward the system, since, in its view, the system can at least guarantee a
certain quasi-legality. Add to this the fact that the post-totalitarian system
has at its disposal a complex mechanism of direct and indirect surveillance
that has no equal in history and it is clear that not only would any attempt to
revolt come to a dead end politically, but it would also be almost technically
impossible to carry off. Most probably it would be liquidated before it had a
chance to translate its intentions into action. Even if revolt were possible,
however, it would remain the solitary gesture of a few isolated individuals and
they would be opposed not only by a gigantic apparatus of national (and
supranational) power, but also by the very society in whose name they were
mounting their revolt in the first place. (This, by the way, is another reason
why the regime and its propaganda have been ascribing terroristic aims to the
"dissident" movements and accusing them of illegal and conspiratorial
methods.)

All of this, however, is not the main reason why the "dissident"
movements support the principle of legality. That reason lies deeper, in the
innermost structure of the "dissident" attitude. This attitude is and
must be fundamentally hostile toward the notion of violent change—simply
because it places its faith in violence. (Generally, the "dissident"
attitude can only accept violence as a necessary evil in extreme situations,
when direct violence can only be met by violence and where remaining passive
would in effect mean supporting violence: let us recall, for example, that the
blindness of European pacifism was one of the factors that prepared the ground
for the Second World War.) As I have already mentioned, "dissidents"
tend to be skeptical about political thought based on the faith that profound
social changes can only be achieved by bringing about (regardless of the
method) changes in the system or in the government, and the belief that such
changes-because they are considered "fundamental" justify the
sacrifice of "less fundamental" things, in other words, human lives.
Respect for a theoretical concept here outweighs respect for human life. Yet
this is precisely what threatens to enslave humanity all over again.

"Dissident" movements, as I have tried to indicate, share exactly
the opposite view. They understand systemic change as something superficial,
something secondary, something that in itself can guarantee nothing. Thus an
attitude that turns away from abstract political visions of the future toward
concrete human beings and ways of defending them effectively in the here and
now is quite naturally accompanied by an intensified antipathy to all forms of
violence carried out in the name of a better future, and by a profound belief
that a future secured by violence might actually be worse than what exists now;
in other words, the future would be fatally stigmatized by the very means used
to secure it. At the same time, this attitude is not to be mistaken for
political conservatism or political moderation. The "dissident"
movements do not shy away from the idea of violent political overthrow because
the idea seems too radical, but on the contrary, because it does not seem
radical enough. For them, the problem lies far too deep to be settled through
mere systemic changes, either governmental or technological. Some people,
faithful to the classical Marxist doctrines of the nineteenth century,
understand our system as the hegemony of an exploiting class over an exploited
class and, operating from the postulate that exploiters never surrender their
power voluntarily, they see the only solution in a revolution to sweep away the
exploiters. Naturally, they regard such things as the struggle for human rights
as something hopelessly legalistic, illusory, opportunistic, and ultimately
misleading because it makes the doubtful assumption that you can negotiate in
good faith with your exploiters on the basis of a false legality. The problem
is that they are unable to find anyone determined enough to carry out this
revolution, with the result that they become bitter, skeptical, passive, and
ultimately apathetic—in other words, they end up precisely where the system
wants them to be. This is one example of how far one can be misled by
mechanically applying, in post-totalitarian circumstances, ideological models
from another world and another time.

Of course, one need not be an advocate of violent revolution to ask whether
an appeal to legality makes any sense at all when the laws-and particularly the
general laws concerning human rights-are no more than a facade, an aspect of
the world of appearances, a mere game behind which lies total manipulation.
"They can ratify anything because they will still go ahead and do whatever
they want anyway"—this is an opinion we often encounter. Is it not true
that constantly to take them at their word, to appeal to laws every child knows
are binding only as long as the government wishes, is in the end just a kind of
hypocrisy, a Švejkian obstructionism and, finally, just another way of playing
the game, another form of self-delusion? In other words, is the legalistic
approach at all compatible with the principle of living within the truth?

This question can only be answered by first looking at the wider
implications of how the legal code functions in the post-totalitarian system.

In a classical dictatorship, to a far greater extent than in the
post-totalitarian system, the will of the ruler is carried out directly, in an
unregulated fashion. A dictatorship has no reason to hide its foundations, nor
to conceal the real workings of power, and therefore it need not encumber
itself to any great extent with a legal code. The post-totalitarian system, on
the other hand, is utterly obsessed with the need to bind everything in a
single order: life in such a state is thoroughly permeated by a dense network
of regulations, proclamations, directives, norms, orders, and rules. (It is not
called a bureaucratic system without good reason.) A large proportion of those
norms function as direct instruments of the complex manipulation of life that
is intrinsic to the post-totalitarian system. Individuals are reduced to little
more than tiny cogs in an enormous mechanism and their significance is limited
to their function in this mechanism. Their job, housing accommodation,
movements, social and cultural expressions, everything, in short, must be
cosseted together as firmly as possible, predetermined, regulated, and
controlled. Every aberration from the prescribed course of life is treated as
error, license, and anarchy. From the cook in the restaurant who, without
hard-to-get permission from the bureaucratic apparatus, cannot cook something
special for his customers, to the singer who cannot perform his new song at a
concert without bureaucratic approval, everyone, in all aspects of their life,
is caught in this regulatory tangle of red tape, the inevitable product of the
post-totalitarian system. With ever-increasing consistency, it binds all the
expressions and aims of life to the spirit of its own aims: the vested
interests of its own smooth, automatic operation.

In a narrower sense the legal code serves the post-totalitarian system in this
direct way as well, that is, it too forms a part of the world of regulations
and prohibitions. At the same time, however, it performs the same service in
another indirect way, one that brings it remarkably closer—depending on which
level of the law is involved—to ideology and in some cases makes it a direct
component of that ideology.

1. Like ideology, the legal code functions as an excuse. It wraps the base
exercise of power in the noble apparel of the letter of the law; it creates the
pleasing illusion that justice is done, society protected, and the exercise of
power objectively regulated. All this is done to conceal the real essence of
post-totalitarian legal practice: the total manipulation of society. If an
outside observer who knew nothing at all about life in Czechoslovakia were to
study only its laws, he would be utterly incapable of understanding what we
were complaining about. The hidden political manipulation of the courts and of
public prosecutors, the limitations placed on lawyers' ability to defend their
clients, the closed nature, de facto, of trials, the arbitrary actions of the
security forces, their position of authority over the judiciary, the absurdly
broad application of several deliberately vague sections of that code, and of
course the state's utter disregard for the positive sections of that code (the
rights of citizens): all of this would remain hidden from our outside observer.
The only thing he would take away would be the impression that our legal code
is not much worse than the legal code of other civilized countries, and not
much different either, except perhaps for certain curiosities, such as the
entrenchment in the constitution of a single political party's eternal rule and
the state's love for a neighboring superpower.

But that is not all: if our observer had the opportunity to study the
formal side of the policing and judicial procedures and practices, how they
look "on paper," he would discover that for the most part the common
rules of criminal procedure are observed: charges are laid within the
prescribed period following arrest, and it is the same with detention orders.
Indictments are properly delivered, the accused has a lawyer, and so on. In
other words, everyone has an excuse: they have all observed the law. In reality,
however, they have cruelly and pointlessly ruined a young person's life,
perhaps for no other reason than because he made samizdat copies of a novel
written by a banned writer, or because the police deliberately falsified their
testimony (as everyone knows, from the judge on down to the defendant). Yet all
of this somehow remains in the background. The falsified testimony is not
necessarily obvious from the trial documents and the section of the Criminal
Code dealing with incitement does not formally exclude the application of that
charge to the copying of a banned novel. In other words, the legal code—at
least in several areas—is no more than a facade, an aspect of the world of
appearances. Then why is it there at all? For exactly the same reason as ideology
is there: it provides a bridge of excuses between the system and individuals,
making it easier for them to enter the power structure and serve the arbitrary
demands of power. The excuse lets individuals fool themselves into thinking
they are merely upholding the law and protecting society from criminals.
(Without this excuse, how much more difficult it would be to recruit new
generations of judges, prosecutors, and interrogators!) As an aspect of the
world of appearances, however, the legal code deceives not only the conscience
of prosecutors, it deceives the public, it deceives foreign observers, and it
even deceives history itself.

2. Like ideology, the legal code is an essential instrument of ritual
communication outside the power structure. It is the legal code that gives the
exercise of power a form, a framework, a set of rules. It is the legal code
that enables all components of the system to communicate, to put themselves in
a good light, to establish their own legitimacy. It provides their whole game
with its rules and engineers with their technology. Can the exercise of
post-totalitarian power be imagined at all without this universal ritual making
it all possible, serving as a common language to bind the relevant sectors of
the power structure together? The more important the position occupied by the
repressive apparatus in the power structure, the more important that it
function according to some kind of formal code. How, otherwise, could people be
so easily and inconspicuously locked up for copying banned books if there were
no judges, prosecutors, interrogators, defense lawyers, court stenographers,
and thick files, and if all this were not held together by some firm order? And
above all, without that innocent-looking Section 100 on incitement? This could
all be done, of course, without a legal code and its accessories, but only in
some ephemeral dictatorship run by a Ugandan bandit, not in a system that
embraces such a huge portion of civilized humankind and represents an integral,
stable, and respected part of the modern world. That would not only be
unthinkable, it would quite simply be technically impossible. Without the legal
code functioning as a ritually cohesive force, the post-totalitarian system
could not exist.

The entire role of ritual, facades, and excuses appears most eloquently, of
course, not in the proscriptive section of the legal code, which sets out what
a citizen may not do and what the grounds for prosecution are, but in the
section declaring what he may do and what his or her rights are. Here there is
truly nothing but "words, words, words." Yet even that part of the
code is of immense importance to the system, for it is here that the system
establishes its legitimacy as a whole, before its own citizens, before
schoolchildren, before the international public, and before history. The system
cannot afford to disregard this because it cannot permit itself to cast doubt
upon the fundamental postulates of its ideology, which are so essential to its
very existence. (We have already seen how the power structure is enslaved by
its own ideology and its ideological prestige.) To do this would be to deny
everything it tries to present itself as and, thus, one of the main pillars on
which the system rests would be undermined: the integrity of the world of
appearances.

If the exercise of power circulates through the whole power structure as
blood flows through veins, then the legal code can be understood as something
that reinforces the walls of those veins. Without it, the blood of power could
not circulate in an organized way and the body of society would hemorrhage at
random. Order would collapse.

A persistent and never-ending appeal to the laws—not just to the laws
concerning human rights, but to all laws—does not mean at all that those who do
so have succumbed to the illusion that in our system the law is anything other
than what it is. They are well aware of the role it plays. But precisely
because they know how desperately the system depends on it—on the
"noble" version of the law, that is—they also know how enormously
significant such appeals are. Because the system cannot do without the law,
because it is hopelessly tied down by the necessity of pretending the laws are
observed, it is compelled to react in some way to such appeals. Demanding that
the laws be upheld is thus an act of living within the truth that threatens the
whole mendacious structure at its point of maximum mendacity. Over and over
again, such appeals make the purely ritualistic nature of the law clear to
society and to those who inhabit its power structures. They draw attention to
its real material substance and thus, indirectly, compel all those who take
refuge behind the law to affirm and make credible this agency of excuses, this
means of communication, this reinforcement of the social arteries outside of
which their will could not be made to circulate through society. They are
compelled to do so for the sake of their own consciences, for the impression
they make on outsiders, to maintain themselves in power (as part of the
system's own mechanism of self-preservation and its principles of cohesion), or
simply out of fear that they will be reproached for being clumsy in handling the
ritual. They have no other choice: because they cannot discard the rules of
their own game, they can only attend more carefully to those rules. Not to
react to challenges means to undermine their own excuse and lose control of
their mutual communications system. To assume that the laws are a mere facade,
that they have no validity, and that therefore it is pointless to appeal to
them would mean to go on reinforcing those aspects of the law that create the
facade and the ritual. It would mean confirming the law as an aspect of the
world of appearances and enabling those who exploit it to rest easy with the
cheapest (and therefore the most mendacious) form of their excuse.

I have frequently witnessed policemen, prosecutors, or judges—if they were
dealing with an experienced Chartist or a courageous lawyer, and if they were
exposed to public attention (as individuals with a name, no longer protected by
the anonymity of the apparatus)—suddenly and anxiously begin to take particular
care that no cracks appear in the ritual. This does not alter the fact that a
despotic power is hiding behind that ritual, but the very existence of the
officials' anxiety necessarily regulates, limits, and slows down the operation
of that despotism.

This, of course, is not enough. But an essential part of the
"dissident" attitude is that it comes out of the reality of the human
here and now. It places more importance on often repeated and consistent
concrete action—even though it may be inadequate and though it may ease only
insignificantly the suffering of a single insignificant citizen—than it does in
some abstract fundamental solution in an uncertain future. In any case, is not
this in fact just another form of "small-scale work" in the
Masarykian sense, with which the "dissident" attitude seemed at first
to be in such sharp contradiction?

This section would be incomplete without stressing certain internal
limitations to the policy of taking them at their own word. The point is this:
even in the most ideal of cases, the law is only one of several imperfect and
more or less external ways of defending what is better in life against what is
worse. By itself, the law can never create anything better. Its purpose is to
render a service and its meaning does not lie in the law itself. Establishing
respect for the law does not automatically ensure a better life for that, after
all, is a job for people and not for laws and institutions. It is possible to
imagine a society with good laws that are fully respected but in which it is
impossible to live. Conversely, one can imagine life being quite bearable even
where the laws are imperfect and imperfectly applied. The most important thing
is always the quality of that life and whether or not the laws enhance life or
repress it, not merely whether they are upheld or not. (Often strict observance
of the law could have a disastrous impact on human dignity.) The key to a
humane, dignified, rich, and happy life does not lie either in the constitution
or in the Criminal Code. These merely establish what may or may not be done
and, thus, they can make life easier or more difficult. They limit or permit,
they punish, tolerate, or defend, but they can never give life substance or
meaning. The struggle for what is called "legality" must constantly
keep this legality in perspective against the background of life as it really
is. Without keeping one’s eyes open to the real dimensions of life's beauty and
misery, and without a moral relationship to life, this struggle will sooner or
later come to grief on the rocks of some self-justifying system of scholastics.
Without really wanting to, one would thus become more and more like the
observer who comes to conclusions about our system only on the basis of trial
documents and is satisfied if all the appropriate regulations have been
observed.

XVIII

IF THE basic job
of the "dissident" movements is to serve truth, that is, to serve the
real aims of life, and if that necessarily develops into a defense of
individuals and their right to a free and truthful life (that is, a defense of
human rights and a struggle to see the laws respected), then another stage of
this approach, perhaps the most mature stage so far, is what Václav Benda
called the development of "parallel structures."

When those who have decided to live within the truth have been denied any
direct influence on the existing social structures, not to mention the
opportunity to participate in them, and when these people begin to create what
I have called the independent life of society, this independent life begins, of
itself, to become structured in a certain way. Sometimes there are only very embryonic
indications of this process of structuring; at other times, the structures are
already quite well developed. Their genesis and evolution are inseparable from
the phenomenon of "dissent," even though they reach far beyond the
arbitrarily defined area of activity usually indicated by that term.

What are these structures? Ivan Jirous was the first in Czechoslovakia to
formulate and apply in practice the concept of a "second culture."
Although at first he was thinking chiefly of nonconformist rock music and only
certain literary, artistic, or performance events close to the sensibilities of
those nonconformist musical groups, the term second culture very rapidly came
to be used for the whole area of independent and repressed culture, that is,
not only for art and its various currents but also for the humanities, the
social sciences, and philosophical thought. This second culture, quite
naturally, has created elementary organizational forms: samizdat editions of
books and magazines, private performances and concerts, seminars, exhibitions,
and so on. (In Poland all of this is vastly more developed: there are
independent publishing houses and many more periodicals, even political
periodicals; they have means of proliferation other than carbon copies, and so
on. In the Soviet Union, samizdat has a longer tradition and clearly its forms
are quite different.) Culture, therefore, is a sphere in which the parallel
structures can be observed in their most highly developed form. Benda, of
course, gives thought to potential or embryonic forms of such structures in
other spheres as well: from a parallel information network to parallel forms of
education (private universities), parallel trade unions, parallel foreign
contacts, to a kind of hypothesis on a parallel economy. On the basis of these
parallel structures, he then develops the notion of a "parallel
polis" or state or, rather, he sees the rudiments of such a polis in these
structures.

At a certain stage in its development, the independent life of society and
the "dissident" movements cannot avoid a certain amount of
organization and institutionalization. This is a natural development, and
unless this independent life of society is somehow radically suppressed and
eliminated, the tendency will grow. Along with it, a parallel political life
will also necessarily evolve, and to a certain extent it exists already in
Czechoslovakia. Various groupings of a more or less political nature will
continue to define themselves politically, to act and confront each other.

These parallel structures, it may be said, represent the most articulated
expressions so far of living within the truth. One of the most important tasks
the "dissident" movements have set themselves is to support and
develop them. Once again, it confirms the fact that all attempts by society to
resist the pressure of the system have their essential beginnings in the
"pre-political" area. For what else are parallel structures than an
area where a different life can be lived, a life that is in harmony with its
own aims and which in turn structures itself in harmony with those aims? What
else are those initial attempts at social self organization than the efforts of
a certain part of society to live—as a society—within the truth, to rid itself
of the self-sustaining aspects of totalitarianism and, thus, to extricate
itself radically from its involvement in the post-totalitarian system? What
else is it but a nonviolent attempt by people to negate the system within
themselves and to establish their lives on a new basis, that of their own
proper identity? And does this tendency not confirm once more the principle of
returning the focus to actual individuals? After all, the parallel structures
do not grow a priori out of a theoretical vision of systemic changes (there are
no political sects involved), but from the aims of life and the authentic needs
of real people. In fact, all eventual changes in the system, changes we may
observe here in their rudimentary forms, have come about as it were de facto,
from "below," because life compelled them to, not because they came
before life, somehow directing it or forcing some change on it.

Historical experience teaches us that any genuinely meaningful point of
departure in an individual's life usually has an element of universality about
it. In other words, it is not something partial, accessible only to a
restricted community, and not transferable to any other. On the contrary, it
must be potentially accessible to everyone; it must foreshadow a general
solution and, thus, it is not just the expression of an introverted, self
contained responsibility that individuals have to and for themselves alone, but
responsibility to and for the world. Thus it would be quite wrong to understand
the parallel structures and the parallel polis as a retreat into a ghetto and
as an act of isolation, addressing itself only to the welfare of those who had
decided on such a course, and who are indifferent to the rest. It would be
wrong, in short, to consider it an essentially group solution that has nothing
to do with the general situation. Such a concept would, from the start,
alienate the notion of living within the truth from its proper point of
departure, which is concern for others, transforming it ultimately into just
another more sophisticated version of living within a lie. In doing so, of
course, it would cease to be a genuine point of departure for individuals and
groups and would recall the false notion of "dissidents" as an
exclusive group with exclusive interests, carrying on their own exclusive dialogue
with the powers that be. In any case, even the most highly developed forms of
life in the parallel structures, even that most mature form of the parallel
polis can only exist—at least in post-totalitarian circumstances—when the
individual is at the same time lodged in the "first," official
structure by a thousand different relationships, even though it may only be the
fact that one buys what one needs in their stores, uses their money, and obeys
their laws. Certainly one can imagine life in its baser aspects flourishing in
the parallel polis, but would not such a life, lived deliberately that way, as
a program, be merely another version of the schizophrenic life within a lie
which everyone else must live in one way or another? Would it not just be further
evidence that a point of departure that is not a model solution, that is not
applicable to others, cannot be meaningful for an individual either? Patočka
used to say that the most interesting thing about responsibility is that we
carry it with us everywhere. That means that responsibility is ours, that we
must accept it and grasp it here, now, in this place in time and space where
the Lord has set us down, and that we cannot lie our way out of it by moving
somewhere else, whether it be to an Indian ashram or to a parallel polis. If
Western young people so often discover that retreat to an Indian monastery
fails them as an individual or group solution, then this is obviously because,
and only because, it lacks that element of universality, since not everyone can
retire to an ashram. Christianity is an example of an opposite way out: it is a
point of departure for me here and now-but only because anyone, anywhere, at
any time, may avail themselves of it.

In other words, the parallel polis points beyond itself and makes sense
only as an act of deepening one's responsibility to and for the whole, as a way
of discovering the most appropriate locus for this responsibility, not as an
escape from it.

XIX

I HAVE already
talked about the political potential of living within the truth and of the
limitations on predicting whether, how, and when a given expression of that
life within the truth can lead to actual changes. I have also mentioned how
irrelevant trying to calculate the risks in this regard are, for an essential
feature of independent initiatives is that they are always, initially at least,
an all-or-nothing gamble.

Nevertheless, this outline of some of the work done by
"dissident" movements would be incomplete without considering, if
only very generally, some of the different ways this work might actually affect
society; in other words, about the ways that responsibility to and for the
whole might (without necessarily meaning that it must) be realized in practice.

In the first place, it has to be emphasized that the whole sphere
comprising the independent life of society, and even more so the
"dissident" movement as such, is naturally far from being the only
potential factor that might influence the history of countries living under the
post-totalitarian system. The latent social crisis in such societies can at any
time, independently of these movements, provoke a wide variety of political
changes. It may unsettle the power structure and induce or accelerate various
hidden confrontations, resulting in personnel, conceptual, or at least
"climactic" changes. It may significantly influence the general
atmosphere of life, evoke unexpected and unforeseen social unrest and
explosions of discontent. Power shifts at the center of the bloc can influence
conditions in the different countries in various ways. Economic factors
naturally have an important influence, as do broader trends of global
civilization. An extremely important area, which could be a source of radical
changes and political upsets, is represented by international politics, the
policies adopted by the other superpower and all the other countries, the
changing structure of international interests and the positions taken by our
bloc. Even the people who end up in the highest positions are not without
significance, although as I have already said, one ought not overestimate the
importance of leading personalities in the post-totalitarian system. There are
many such influences and combinations of influence, and the eventual political
impact of the "dissident" movement is thinkable only against this
general background and in the context that this background provides. That
impact is only one of the many factors (and far from the most important one)
that affect political developments, and it differs from the other factors
perhaps only in that its essential focus is reflecting upon that political
development from the point of view of a defense of people and seeking an
immediate application of that reflection.

The primary purpose of the outward direction of these movements is always,
as we have seen, to have an impact on society, not to affect the power
structure, at least not directly and immediately. Independent initiatives
address the hidden sphere; they demonstrate that living within the truth is a
human and social alternative and they struggle to expand the space available
for that life; they help—even though it is, of course, indirect help—to raise
the confidence of citizens; they shatter the world of appearances and unmask
the real nature of power. They do not assume a messianic role; they are not a
social avant-garde or elite that alone knows best, and whose task it is to
"raise the consciousness" of the "unconscious" masses (that
arrogant self-projection is, once again, intrinsic to an essentially different
way of thinking, the kind that feels it has a patent on some ideal project and
therefore that it has the right to impose it on society). Nor do they want to
lead anyone. They leave it up to each individual to decide what he will or will
not take from their experience and work. (If official Czechoslovak propaganda
described the Chartists as "self appointees," it was not in order to
emphasize any real avant-garde ambitions on their part, but rather a natural expression
of how the regime thinks, its tendency to judge others according to itself,
since behind any expression of criticism it automatically sees the desire to
cast the mighty from their seats and rule in their places "in the name of
the people," the same pretext the regime itself has used for years.)

These movements, therefore, always affect the power structure as such
indirectly, as a part of society as a whole, for they are primarily addressing
the hidden spheres of society, since it is not a matter of confronting the
regime on the level of actual power.

I have already indicated one of the ways this can work: an awareness of the
laws and the responsibility for seeing that they are upheld is indirectly
strengthened. That, of course, is only a specific instance of a far broader
influence, the indirect pressure felt from living within the truth: the
pressure created by free thought, alternative values and alternative behavior,
and by independent social self-realization. The power structure, whether it
wants to or not, must always react to this pressure to a certain extent. Its
response, however, is always limited to two dimensions: repression and
adaptation. Sometimes one dominates, sometimes the other. For example, the
Polish "flying university" came under increased persecution and the
"flying teachers" were detained by the police. At the same time,
however, professors in existing official universities tried to enrich their own
curricula with several subjects hitherto considered taboo and this was a result
of indirect pressure exerted by the "flying university." The motives
for this adaptation may vary from the ideal (the hidden sphere has received the
message and conscience and the will to truth are awakened) to the purely
utilitarian: the regime's instinct for survival compels it to notice the
changing ideas and the changing mental and social climate and to react flexibly
to them. Which of these motives happens to predominate in a given moment is not
essential in terms of the final effect.

Adaptation is the positive dimension of the regime’s response, and it can,
and usually does, have a wide spectrum of forms and phases. Some circles may
try to integrate values of people from the "parallel world" into the
official structures, to appropriate them, to become a little like them while
trying to make them a little like themselves, and thus to adjust an obvious and
untenable imbalance. In the 1960s, progressive communists began to
"discover" certain unacknowledged cultural values and phenomena. This
was a positive step, although not without its dangers, since the "integrated"
or "appropriated" values lost something of their independence and
originality, and having been given a cloak of officiality and conformity, their
credibility was somewhat weakened. In a further phase, this adaptation can lead
to various attempts on the part of the official structures to reform, both in
terms of their ultimate goals and structurally. Such reforms are usually
halfway measures; they are attempts to combine and realistically coordinate
serving life and serving the post-totalitarian automatism. But they cannot be
otherwise. They muddy what was originally a clear demarcation line between
living within the truth and living with a lie. They cast a smokescreen over the
situation, mystify society, and make it difficult for people to keep their
bearings. This, of course, does not alter the fact that it is always
essentially good when it happens because it opens out new spaces. But it does
make it more difficult to distinguish between "admissible" and
"inadmissible" compromises.

Another—and higher—phase of adaptation is a process of internal
differentiation that takes place in the official structures. These structures
open themselves to more or less institutionalized forms of plurality because
the real aims of life demand it. (One example: without changing the centralized
and institutional basis of cultural life, new publishing houses, group
periodicals, artists' groups, parallel research institutes and workplaces, and
so on, may appear under pressure from below. Or another example: the single,
monolithic youth organization run by the state as a typical post-totalitarian
"transmission belt" disintegrates under the pressure of real needs
into a number of more or less independent organizations such as the Union of
University Students, the Union of Secondary School Students, the Organization
of Working Youth, and so on.) There is a direct relationship between this kind
of differentiation, which allows initiatives from below to be felt, and the
appearance and constitution of new structures which are already parallel, or
rather independent, but which at the same time are respected, or at least
tolerated in varying degrees, by official institutions. These new institutions
are more than just liberalized official structures adapted to the authentic
needs of life; they are a direct expression of those needs, demanding a
position in the context of what is already here. In other words, they are
genuine expressions of the tendency of society to organize itself. (In
Czechoslovakia in 1968 the best-known organizations of this type were KAN, the
Club of Committed Non-Communists, and K231, an organization of former political
prisoners.)

The ultimate phase of this process is the situation in which the official
structures—as agencies of the post-totalitarian system, existing only to serve
its automatism and constructed in the spirit of that role-simply begin
withering away and dying off, to be replaced by new structures that have
evolved from below and are put together in a fundamentally different way.

Certainly many other ways may be imagined in which the aims of life can
bring about political transformations in the general organization of things and
weaken on all levels the hold that techniques of manipulation have on society.
Here I have mentioned only the way in which the general organization of things
was in fact changed as we experienced it ourselves in Czechoslovakia around
1968. It must be added that all these concrete instances were part of a
specific historical process which ought not be thought of as the only alternative,
nor as necessarily repeatable (particularly not in our country), a fact which,
of course, takes nothing away from the importance of the general lessons which
are still sought and found in it to this day.

While on the subject of 1968 in Czechoslovakia, it may be appropriate to
point to some of the characteristic aspects of developments at that time. All
the transformations, first in the general mood, then conceptually, and finally
structurally, did not occur under pressure from the kind of parallel structures
that are taking shape today. Such structures—which are sharply defined
antitheses of the official structures—quite simply did not exist at the time,
nor were there any "dissidents" in the present sense of the word. The
changes that took place were simply a consequence of pressures of the most
varied sort, some thoroughgoing, some partial. There were spontaneous attempts
at freer forms of thinking, independent creation, and political articulation.
There were long-term, spontaneous, and inconspicuous efforts to bring about the
interpenetration of the independent life of society with the existing
structures, usually beginning with the quiet institutionalization of this life
on and around the periphery of the official structures. In other words, it was
a gradual process of social awakening, a kind of creeping process in which the
hidden spheres gradually opened out. (There is some truth in the official
propaganda which talks about a "creeping counterrevolution" in
Czechoslovakia, referring to how the aims of life proceed.) The motive force
behind this awakening did not have to come exclusively from the independent
life of society, considered as a definable social milieu (although of course it
did come from there, a fact that has yet to be fully appreciated). It could
also simply have come from the fact that people in the official structures who
more or less identified with the official ideology came up against reality as
it really was and as it gradually became clear to them through latent social
crises and their own bitter experiences with the true nature and operations of
power. (I am thinking here mainly of the many antidogmatic reform communists
who grew to become, over the years, a force inside the official structures.)
Neither the proper conditions nor the raison d'être existed for those limited,
"self-structuring" independent initiatives familiar from the present
era of "dissident" movements that stand so sharply outside the
official structures and are unrecognized by them en bloc. At that time, the
post-totalitarian system in Czechoslovakia had not yet petrified into the
static, sterile, and stable forms that exist today, forms that compel people to
fall back on their own organizing capabilities. For many historical and social
reasons, the regime in 1968 was more open. The power structure, exhausted by
Stalinist despotism and helplessly groping about for painless reform, was
inevitably rotting from within, quite incapable of offering any intelligent
opposition to changes in the mood, to the way its younger members regarded
things and to the thousands of authentic expressions of life on the "pre-political"
level that sprang up in that vast political terrain between the official and
the unofficial.

From the more general point of view, yet another typical circumstance
appears to be important: the social ferment that came to a head in 1968 never—in
terms of actual structural changes—went any further than the reform, the
differentiation, or the replacement of structures that were really only of
secondary importance. It did not affect the very essence of the power structure
in the post-totalitarian system, which is to say its political model, the
fundamental principles of social organization, not even the economic model in
which all economic power is subordinated to political power. Nor were any
essential structural changes made in the direct instruments of power (the army,
the police, the judiciary, etc.). On that level, the issue was never more than
a change in the mood, the personnel, the political line and, above all changes
in how that power was exercised. Everything else remained at the stage of
discussion and planning. The two officially accepted programs that went
furthest in this regard were the April 1968 Action Program of the Communist
Party of Czechoslovakia and the proposal for economic reforms. The Action
Program—it could not have been otherwise—was full of contradictions and halfway
measures that left the physical aspects of power untouched. And the economic
proposals, while they went a long way to accommodate the aims of life in the
economic sphere (they accepted such notions as a plurality of interests and
initiatives, dynamic incentives, restrictions upon the economic command
system), left untouched the basic pillar of economic power, that is, the
principle of state, rather than genuine social ownership of the means of
production. So there is a gap here which no social movement in the post-totalitarian
system has ever been able to bridge, with the possible exception of those few
days during the Hungarian uprising.

What other developmental alternative might emerge in the future? Replying
to that question would mean entering the realm of pure speculation. For the
time being, it can be said that the latent social crisis in the system has
always (and there is no reason to believe it will not continue to do so)
resulted in a variety of political and social disturbances. (Germany in 1953,
Hungary, the U.S.S.R. and Poland in 1956, Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1968,
and Poland in 1970 and 1976), all of them very different in their backgrounds,
the course of their evolution, and their final consequences. If we look at the
enormous complex of different factors that led to such disturbances, and at the
impossibility of predicting what accidental accumulation of events will cause
that fermentation in the hidden sphere to break through to the light of day
(the problem of the "final straw"); and if we consider how impossible
it is to guess what the Future holds, given such opposing trends as, on the one
hand, the increasingly profound integration of the "bloc" and the
expansion of power within it, and on the other hand the prospects of the
U.S.S.R. disintegrating under pressure from awakening national consciousness in
the non-Russian areas (in this regard the Soviet Union cannot expect to remain
forever free of the worldwide struggle For national liberation), then we must
see the hopelessness of trying to make long-range predictions.

In any case, I do not believe that this type of speculation has any
immediate significance for the "dissident" movements since these
movements, after all, do not develop from speculative thinking, and so to
establish themselves on that basis would mean alienating themselves from the
very source of their identity.

As far as prospects for the "dissident" movements as such go,
there seems to be very little likelihood that future developments will lead to
a lasting co-existence of two isolated, mutually noninteracting and mutually
indifferent bodies—the main polis and the parallel polis. As long as it remains
what it is, the practice of living within the truth cannot fail to be a threat
to the system. It is quite impossible to imagine it continuing to co-exist with
the practice of living within a lie without dramatic tension. The relationship
of the post-totalitarian system—as long as it remains what it is—and the
independent life of society—as long as it remains the locus of a renewed
responsibility for the whole and to the whole—will always be one of either
latent or open conflict.

In this situation there are only two possibilities: either the
post-totalitarian system will go on developing (that is, will be able to go on
developing), thus inevitably coming closer to some dreadful Orwellian vision of
a world of absolute manipulation, while all the more articulate expressions of
living within the truth are definitely snuffed out; or the independent life of
society (the parallel polis), including the "dissident" movements,
will slowly but surely become a social phenomenon of growing importance, taking
a real part in the life of society with increasing clarity and influencing the
general situation. Of course this will always be only one of many factors
influencing the situation and it will operate rather in the background, in
concert with the other factors and in a way appropriate to the background.

Whether it ought to focus on reforming the official structures or on
encouraging differentiation, or on replacing them with new structures, whether
the intent is to ameliorate the system or, on the contrary, to tear it down:
these and similar questions, insofar as they are not pseudo-problems, can be
posed by the "dissident" movement only within the context of a
particular situation, when the movement is faced with a concrete task. In other
words, it must pose questions, as it were, ad hoc, out of a concrete
consideration of the authentic needs of life. To reply to such questions
abstractly and to formulate a political program in terms of some hypothetical
future would mean, I believe, a return to the spirit and methods of traditional
politics, and this would limit and alienate the work of "dissent"
where it is most intrinsically itself and has the most genuine prospects for
the future. I have already emphasized several times that these "dissident"
movements do not have their point of departure in the invention of systemic
changes but in a real, everyday struggle for a better life here and now. The
political and structural systems that life discovers for itself will clearly
always be—for some time to come, at least—limited, halfway, unsatisfying, and
polluted by debilitating tactics. It cannot be otherwise, and we must expect
this and not be demoralized by it. It is of great importance that the main
thing—the everyday, thankless, and never ending struggle of human beings to
live more freely, truthfully, and in quiet dignity—never impose any limits on
itself, never be halfhearted, inconsistent, never trap itself in political
tactics, speculating on the outcome of its actions or entertaining fantasies
about the future. The purity of this struggle is the best guarantee of optimum
results when it comes to actual interaction with the post-totalitarian
structures.

XX

THE SPECIFIC
nature of post-totalitarian conditions—with their absence of a normal political
life and the fact that any far-reaching political change is utterly
unforeseeable—has one positive aspect: it compels us to examine our situation
in terms of its deeper coherences and to consider our future in the context of
global, long-range prospects of the world of which we are a part. The fact that
the most intrinsic and fundamental confrontation between human beings and the
system takes place at a level incomparably more profound than that of
traditional politics would seem, at the same time, to determine as well the
direction such considerations will take.

Our attention, therefore, inevitably turns to the most essential matter:
the crisis of contemporary technological society as a whole, the crisis that
Heidegger describes as the ineptitude of humanity face to face with the
planetary power of technology. Technology—that child of modern science, which
in turn is a child of modern metaphysics—is out of humanity's control, has
ceased to serve us, has enslaved us and compelled us to participate in the
preparation of our own destruction. And humanity can find no way out: we have
no idea and no faith, and even less do we have a political conception to help
us bring things back under human control. We look on helplessly as that coldly
functioning machine we have created inevitably engulfs us, tearing us away from
our natural affiliations (for instance, from our habitat in the widest sense of
that word, including our habitat in the biosphere) just as it removes us from
the experience of Being and casts us into the world of "existences."
This situation has already been described from many different angles and many
individuals and social groups have sought, often painfully, to find ways out of
it (for instance, through oriental thought or by forming communes). The only social,
or rather political, attempt to do something about it that contains the
necessary element of universality (responsibility to and for the whole) is the
desperate and, given the turmoil the world is in, fading voice of the
ecological movement, and even there the attempt is limited to a particular
notion of how to use technology to oppose the dictatorship of technology.

"Only a God can save us now," Heidegger says, and he emphasizes
the necessity of "a different way of thinking," that is, of a
departure from what philosophy has been for centuries, and a radical change in
the way in which humanity understands itself, the world, and its position in
it. He knows no way out and all he can recommend is "preparing
expectations."

Various thinkers and movements feel that this as yet unknown way out might
be most generally characterized as a broad "existential revolution:' I share
this view, and I also share the opinion that a solution cannot be sought in
some technological sleight of hand, that is, in some external proposal for
change, or in a revolution that is merely philosophical, merely social, merely
technological, or even merely political. These are all areas where the
consequences of an existential revolution can and must be felt; but their most
intrinsic locus can only be human existence in the profoundest sense of the
word. It is only from that basis that it can become a generally ethical—and, of
course, ultimately a political—reconstitution of society.

What we call the consumer and industrial (or postindustrial) society, and
Ortega y Gasset once understood as "the revolt of the masses," as
well as the intellectual, moral, political, and social misery in the world
today: all of this is perhaps merely an aspect of the deep crisis in which
humanity, dragged helplessly along by the automatism of global technological
civilization, finds itself.

The post-totalitarian system is only one aspect—a particularly drastic
aspect and thus all the more revealing of its real origins—of this general
inability of modern humanity to be the master of its own situation. The
automatism of the post-totalitarian system is merely an extreme version of the
global automatism of technological civilization. The human failure that it mirrors
is only one variant of the general failure of modern humanity.

This planetary challenge to the position of human beings in the world is,
of course, also taking place in the Western world, the only difference being
the social and political forms it takes. Heidegger refers expressly to a crisis
of democracy. There is no real evidence that Western democracy, that is,
democracy of the traditional parliamentary type, can offer solutions that are
any more profound. It may even be said that the more room there is in the
Western democracies (compared to our world) for the genuine aims of life, the
better the crisis is hidden from people and the more deeply do they become
immersed in it.

It would appear that the traditional parliamentary democracies can offer no
fundamental opposition to the automatism of technological civilization and the
industrial-consumer society, for they, too, are being dragged helplessly along
by it. People are manipulated in ways that are infinitely more subtle and
refined than the brutal methods used in the post-totalitarian societies. But
this static complex of rigid, conceptually sloppy, and politically pragmatic
mass political parties run by professional apparatuses and releasing the
citizen from all forms of concrete and personal responsibility; and those
complex focuses of capital accumulation engaged in secret manipulations and
expansion; the omnipresent dictatorship of consumption, production,
advertising, commerce, consumer culture, and all that flood of information: all
of it, so often analyzed and described, can only with great difficulty be
imagined as the source of humanity's rediscovery of itself. In his June 1978
Harvard lecture, Solzhenitsyn describes the illusory nature of freedoms not
based on personal responsibility and the chronic inability of the traditional
democracies, as a result, to oppose violence and totalitarianism. In a democracy,
human beings may enjoy many personal freedoms and securities that are unknown
to us, but in the end they do them no good, for they too are ultimately victims
of the same automatism, and are incapable of defending their concerns about
their own identity or preventing their superficialization or transcending
concerns about their own personal survival to become proud and responsible
members of the polis, making a genuine contribution to the creation of its
destiny.

Because all our prospects for a significant change for the better are very
long range indeed, we are obliged to take note of this deep crisis of
traditional democracy. Certainly, if conditions were to be created for
democracy in some countries in the Soviet bloc (although this is becoming
increasingly improbable), it might be an appropriate transitional solution that
would help to restore the devastated sense of civic awareness, to renew
democratic discussion, to allow for the crystallization of an elementary
political plurality, an essential expression of the aims of life. But to cling
to the notion of traditional parliamentary democracy as one's political ideal
and to succumb to the illusion that only this tried and true form is capable of
guaranteeing human beings enduring dignity and an independent role in society
would, in my opinion, be at the very least shortsighted.

I see a renewed focus of politics on real people as something far more
profound than merely returning to the everyday mechanisms of Western (or, if
you like, bourgeois) democracy. In 1968, I felt that our problem could be
solved by forming an opposition party that would compete publicly for power
with the Communist Party. I have long since come to realize, however, that it
is just not that simple and that no opposition party in and of itself, just as
no new electoral laws in and of themselves, could make society proof against
some new form of violence. No "dry" organizational measures in
themselves can provide that guarantee, and we would be hard-pressed to find in
them that God who alone can save us.

XXI

AND NOW I may
properly be asked the question: What then is to be done?

My skepticism toward alternative political models and the ability of
systemic reforms or changes to redeem us does not, of course, mean that I am
skeptical of political thought altogether. Nor does my emphasis on the
importance of focusing concern on real human beings disqualify me from
considering the possible structural consequences flowing from it. On the
contrary, if A was said, then B should be said as well. Nevertheless, I will
offer only a few very general remarks.

Above all, any existential revolution should provide hope of a moral
reconstitution of society, which means a radical renewal of the relationship of
human beings to what I have called the "human order," which no
political order can replace. A new experience of being, a renewed rootedness in
the universe, a newly grasped sense of higher responsibility, a newfound inner
relationship to other people and to the human community—these factors clearly
indicate the direction in which we must go.

And the political consequences? Most probably they could be reflected in
the constitution of structures that will derive from this new spirit, from
human factors rather than from a particular formalization of political
relationships and guarantees. In other words, the issue is the rehabilitation
of values like trust, openness, responsibility, solidarity, love. I believe in
structures that are not aimed at the technical aspect of the execution of
power, but at the significance of that execution in structures held together
more by a commonly shared feeling of the importance of certain communities than
by commonly shared expansionist ambitions directed outward. There can and must
be structures that are open, dynamic, and small; beyond a certain point, human
ties like personal trust and personal responsibility cannot work. There must be
structures that in principle place no limits on the genesis of different
structures. Any accumulation of power whatsoever (one of the characteristics of
automatism) should be profoundly alien to it. They would be structures not in
the sense of organizations or institutions, but like a community. Their
authority certainly cannot be based on long-empty traditions, like the
tradition of mass political parties, but rather on how, in concrete terms, they
enter into a given situation. Rather than a strategic agglomeration of
formalized organizations, it is better to have organizations springing up ad
hoc, infused with enthusiasm for a particular purpose and disappearing when
that purpose has been achieved. The leaders' authority ought to derive from
their personalities and be personally tested in their particular surroundings,
and not from their position in any nomenklatura. They should enjoy great
personal confidence and even great lawmaking powers based on that confidence.
This would appear to be the only way out of the classic impotence of
traditional democratic organizations, which frequently seem founded more on
mistrust than mutual confidence, and more on collective irresponsibility than
on responsibility. It is only with the full existential backing of every member
of the community that a permanent bulwark against creeping totalitarianism can
be established. These structures should naturally arise from below as a
consequence of authentic social self-organization; they should derive vital
energy from a living dialogue with the genuine needs from which they arise, and
when these needs are gone, the structures should also disappear. The principles
of their internal organization should be very diverse, with a minimum of
external regulation. The decisive criterion of this self-constitution should be
the structure's actual significance, and not just a mere abstract norm.

Both political and economic life ought to be founded on the varied and
versatile cooperation of such dynamically appearing and disappearing
organizations. As far as the economic life of society goes, I believe in the principle
of self-management, which is probably the only way of achieving what all the
theorists of socialism have dreamed about, that is, the genuine (i.e.,
informal) participation of workers in economic decision making, leading to a
feeling of genuine responsibility for their collective work. The principles of
control and discipline ought to be abandoned in favor of self-control and
self-discipline.

As is perhaps clear from even so general an outline, the systemic
consequences of an existential revolution of this type go significantly beyond
the framework of classical parliamentary democracy. Having introduced the term
"post-totalitarian" for the purposes of this discussion, perhaps I
should refer to the notion I have just outlined—purely for the moment—as the
prospects for a "post-democratic" system.

Undoubtedly this notion could be developed further, but I think it would be
a foolish undertaking, to say the least, because slowly but surely the whole
idea would become alienated, separated from itself. After all, the essence of
such a "post-democracy" is also that it can only develop via facti,
as a process deriving directly from life, from a new atmosphere and a new
spirit (political thought, of course, would play a role here, though not as a
director, merely as a guide). It would be presumptuous, however, to try to
foresee the structural expressions of this new spirit without that spirit
actually being present and without knowing its concrete physiognomy.

XXII

I WOULD probably
have omitted the entire preceding section as a more suitable subject for
private meditation were it not for a certain recurring sensation. It may seem
rather presumptuous, and therefore I will present it as a question: Does not
this vision of "post-democratic" structures in some ways remind one
of the "dissident" groups or some of the independent citizens'
initiatives as we already know them from our own surroundings? Do not these
small communities, bound together by thousands of shared tribulations, give
rise to some of those special humanly meaningful political relationships and
ties that we have been talking about? Are not these communities (and they are
communities more than organizations)—motivated mainly by a common belief in the
profound significance of what they are doing since they have no chance of
direct, external success—joined together by precisely the kind of atmosphere in
which the formalized and ritualized ties common in the official structures are
supplanted by a living sense of solidarity and fraternity? Do not these "post-democratic"
relationships of immediate personal trust and the informal rights of
individuals based on them come out of the background of all those commonly
shared difficulties? Do not these groups emerge, live, and disappear under
pressure from concrete and authentic needs, unburdened by the ballast of hollow
traditions? Is not their attempt to create an articulate form of living within
the truth and to renew the feeling of higher responsibility in an apathetic
society really a sign of some kind of rudimentary moral reconstitution?

In other words, are not these informed, nonbureaucratic, dynamic, and open
communities that comprise the "parallel polis" a kind of rudimentary
prefiguration, a symbolic model of those more meaningful
"post-democratic" political structures that might become the
foundation of a better society?

I know from thousands of personal experiences how the mere circumstance of
having signed Charter 77 has immediately created a deeper and more open
relationship and evoked sudden and powerful feelings of genuine community among
people who were all but strangers before. This kind of thing happens only
rarely, if at all, even among people who have worked together for long periods
in some apathetic official structure. It is as though the mere awareness and
acceptance of a common task and a shared experience were enough to transform
people and the climate of their lives, as though it gave their public work a
more human dimension than is seldom found elsewhere.

Perhaps all this is only the consequence of a common threat. Perhaps the
moment the threat ends or eases, the mood it helped create will begin to
dissipate as well. (The aim of those who threaten us, however, is precisely the
opposite. Again and again, one is shocked by the energy they devote to
contaminating, in various despicable ways, all the human relationships inside
the threatened community.)

Yet even if that were so, it would change nothing in the question I have
posed.

We do not know the way out of the marasmus of the world, and it would be an
expression of unforgivable pride were we to see the little we do as a
fundamental solution, or were we to present ourselves, our community, and our
solutions to vital problems as the only thing worth doing.

Even so, I think that given all these preceding thoughts on
post-totalitarian conditions, and given the circumstances and the inner
constitution of the developing efforts to defend human beings and their
identity in such conditions, the questions I have posed are appropriate. If
nothing else, they are an invitation to reflect concretely on our own
experience and to give some thought to whether certain elements of that
experience do not—without our really being aware of it—point somewhere further,
beyond their apparent limits, and whether right here, in our everyday lives,
certain challenges are not already encoded, quietly waiting for the moment when
they will be read and grasped.

For the real question is whether the brighter future is really always so
distant. What if, on the contrary, it has been here for a long time already,
and only our own blindness and weakness has prevented us from seeing it around
us and within us, and kept us from developing it?